ABSTRACT
As director of education for the University of Miami School of Medicine transplant program, my responsibilities include educating doctors, nurses, allied health profe~sionals, and the lay community about organ transplantation and cadaveric organ donation. In addition, I regularly counsel persons who have end stage renal disease about their probable experience with transplantation and rehabilitation. Thus, hundreds of patients have shared with me their experience of physiological debilitation and psychological distress as a result of chronic disease and dialysis. Personal experience has essentially defined my relationship with these patients. I, too, suffered years of chronic disease and, in 1972, underwent a kidney transplant.
