Organ and tissue donation — Australia

Register at donatelife.gov.au or through the Express Plus Medicare app. You need a Medicare card. It takes about a minute. You can also register on a paper form at your GP or pharmacy.

In Australia, families are asked to confirm donation. If they don't know your wishes, they may say no. A two-minute conversation can change that. Say it out loud: "I want to be an organ donor. Please say yes if they ask."

You can donate a kidney or part of your liver while alive. Living kidney donation is the most common. You would be thoroughly assessed by a transplant team to make sure it is safe for you. The recipient can be someone you know or an anonymous match.

Organ donation requires death in hospital, usually in ICU. The family is approached gently by a specialist nurse from DonateLife. The window is very short — often less than an hour, sometimes minutes — so knowing the person's wishes in advance matters enormously.

Tissue donation (eye, bone, skin, heart valves) has a slightly longer window, but it is still measured in hours — not days.

Hospitals have their own clinical guidelines for what can be donated and when, and these differ between facilities and individual cases. The treating team and the DonateLife specialist will tell you what is possible in your situation. Trust them — they are following the protocols their hospital, state, and national bodies require. Please don't try to work out the deadline yourself from websites or apps; the real answer depends on factors only the clinical team can assess.

If donation matters to the person who has died, say so straight away to the nurse or doctor looking after them. That single sentence is the most useful thing you can do.

Legally, the register records the person's consent. In practice, Australian hospitals will not proceed with donation over a family's objection. This is why the conversation matters more than the registration — both are needed.

The body is treated with dignity throughout. Donation does not delay the funeral or prevent an open-casket service. The surgical team works with the same care they would for any living patient. Afterwards, the body is prepared for the family as normal.