Expanding the DCD donor pool: prediction of time to death after removal of life-sustaining treatments

Medical students' knowledge, attitudes and awareness toward organ donation

OBJECTIVE

This survey study aimed to evaluate medical students' attitudes, knowledge, and awareness toward organ donation.

METHODS

For this questionnaire-based cross-sectional study, 1000 medical students were interviewed, out of which 950 students agreed to participate in the study and were enrolled. A questionnaire form consisting of 29 questions was used to determine the students' socio-demographic characteristics and rate their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about organ donation.

RESULTS

While 95.5% (n = 907) of the students stated that they had not donated organs, 41.1% stated that they had not yet decided to donate organs, and 59.7% stated that they had no specific reason for them not donating organs. Out of the participants, 68.1% stated that organ donation complies with the Islamic rules; 40.7% stated that the Directorate of Religious Affairs issued a fatwa on organ donation, and 39.4% stated that there are legal regulations on organ donation in the country. While 22.1% of the students stated that a person with brain death could come back to life, 19.7% stated that they did not know about this issue. The students who had donated organs and who did not show significant differences regarding the answers given to the questions about whether organ donation complies with religious rules (p < 0.001), where one must apply to donate organs (p = 0.032), the will to donate the organs of a relative with brain death (p = 0.004), and whether preaching in mosques and foundations is needed to increase organ donation rates (p = 0.042). Although there was a correlation between the students' grade and their attitude and knowledge about organ donation, this correlation was weak and showed no parallelism with increasing grades.

CONCLUSION

This study indicates that medical students have inadequate knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about organ donation. In our opinion, it is of paramount importance to provide physician candidates, who should set an example for society, with periodic training on organ donation throughout their academic life in shaping the national organ donation policy in the future.

Interventions aimed at healthcare professionals to increase the number of organ donors: a systematic review

Background

The last decade, there have been many initiatives worldwide to increase the number of organ donors. However, it is not clear which initiatives are most effective. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of interventions aimed at healthcare professionals in order to increase the number of organ donors.

Methods

We systematically searched PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane Library for English language studies published until April 24, 2019. We included studies describing interventions in hospitals aimed at healthcare professionals who are involved in the identification, referral, and care of a family of potential organ donors. After the title abstract and full-text selection, two reviewers independently assessed each study’s quality and extracted data.

Results

From the 18,854 records initially extracted from five databases, we included 22 studies in our review. Of these 22 studies, 14 showed statistically significant effects on identification rate, family consent rate, and/or donation rate. Interventions that positively influenced one or more of these outcomes were training of emergency personnel in organ donation, an electronic support system to identify and/or refer potential donors, a collaborative care pathway, donation request by a trained professional, and additional family support in the ICU by a trained nurse. The methodological quality of the studies was relatively low, mainly because of the study designs.

Conclusions

Although there is paucity of data, collaborative care pathways, training of healthcare professionals and additional support for relatives of potential donors seem to be promising interventions to increase the number of organ donors.

Trial registration

PROSPERO, CRD42018068185

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s13054-019-2509-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.