Organ donation education initiatives: A report of the Donor Management Task Force

Teenagers, Audio-Visual Prosumers and Audience Generators in the Field of Organ Donation

The creation of audio-visual content and the increase in the use of social networks by society have provided new opportunities for promoting health and the benefits of organ donation. This study analyzes the influence of audiovisual content produced by adolescents in the context of an educational program related to the promotion of organ donation with diffusion through social media. The program was implemented in the fourth year (mainly 15 and 16 year olds) in ten high schools in Spain. In the first phase, students learn about donation and create audio-visual messages about its benefits for society; in the second phase, they share this content on social networks. The influence of the content was measured using YouTube Analytics. In addition, a questionnaire was administered after the program to measure the way in which they shared the content on social networks. A total of 391 students participated in program, submitting 63 short films that obtained 104,912 views. The short films focused on appealing to society about the need for organs and the benefits of the organ donation and transplantation process. The social network that was used most frequently to share the content was WhatsApp (81.8%). Educating teenagers and turning them into prescribers of the health benefits of the organ donation and transplantation process through the use of social networks could be a good tool that can be exported to other fields of health.

Developing an Organ Donation Curriculum for Medical Undergraduates in China Based on Theory of Planned Behavior: A Delphi Method Study

BACKGROUND Organ donation education as an important approach to improve support for donating, but it is inconsistent and unstructured. Therefore, the development of donation-related curriculum is essential, especially for medical undergraduates. This study aimed to define the fundamental contents for organ donation curriculum that could be useful for international organ donor agencies and educational institutions. MATERIAL AND METHODS The basic framework of the organ donation curriculum was constructed under the guidance of the theory of planned behavior in China. Then, Delphi method was used to modify and improve the contents by conducting 2 rounds of consultation with 22 Chinese experts from 6 professional fields. The surveys winnowed the list and assessed the accuracy and importance of each item. RESULTS Response rates for the Delphi were 100.00% for the first round and 95.45% for the second round. A 3-layer curriculum system was developed based on 3 dimensions of the theory of planned behavior. The primary-layer items including the overview, cultural concepts, ethical issues, laws and regulations, medical knowledge, and psychological care in organ donation, elicited at least 85% of the experts to agree or strongly agree that the items were basic and core content for organ donation education. All of the 17 second-layer and 46 third-layer items also had 80% or more expert agreement. CONCLUSIONS This study identified the contents of an organ donation curriculum for medical undergraduates in China, which would be useful for researchers and instructors in medical education. Determining the fundamental content of a donation-related curriculum is an indispensable step for implementation of organ donation education and promotion of organ donation.

Crowdsourced analysis of factors and misconceptions associated with parental willingness to donate their child's organs

We evaluated factors associated with a parental willingness to donate their child's organs. A twenty-one-question survey was administered to US parents with at least one child to measure organ donation acceptability and brain death beliefs using an online crowdsourcing medium, Amazon's Mechanical Turk Prime. We collected 425 surveys; 76% were willing to donate their own and 65% willing to donate their child's organs. Parents who agreed brain death was synonymous with death (47%) were 2.37 times more willing to donate. Compared with White respondents, Black (OR 5.27, CI 2.81, 9.88) and Hispanic (OR 2.24, CI 1.06-4.75) participants were more likely to believe doctors "steal organs from patients" and "declare someone dead based on their skin color" (OR 4.97, CI 2.65-9.32; OR 2.19, CI 1.01-4.72, respectively). Lower income participants were also more likely to believe doctors "steal organs from patients," OR 0.81 (95% CI 0.68-0.96 for increasing income) and "declare someone dead based on how much money they have," OR 0.80 (95% CI 0.67-0.96 for increasing income). Confusion surrounding brain death and skepticism (particularly among racial and ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic groups) toward doctors' motivations for donation contribute to lack of parental willingness to donate.

The Top Ten Websites in Critical Care Medicine Education Today

INTRODUCTION:

The number of websites for the critical care provider is rapidly growing, including websites that are part of the Free Open Access Med(ical ed)ucation (FOAM) movement. With this rapidly expanding number of websites, critical appraisal is needed to identify quality websites. The last major review of critical care websites was published in 2011, and thus a new review of the websites relevant to the critical care clinician is necessary.

METHODS:

A new assessment tool for evaluating critical care medicine education websites, the Critical Care Medical Education Website Quality Evaluation Tool (CCMEWQET), was modified from existing tools. A PubMed and Startpage search from 2007 to 2017 was conducted to identify websites relevant to critical care medicine education. These websites were scored based on the CCMEWQET.

RESULTS:

Ninety-seven websites relevant for critical care medicine education were identified and scored, and the top ten websites were described in detail. Common types of resources available on these websites included blog posts, podcasts, videos, online journal clubs, and interactive components such as quizzes. Almost one quarter of websites (n = 22) classified themselves as FOAM websites. The top ten websites most often included an editorial process, high-quality and appropriately attributed graphics and multimedia, scored much higher for comprehensiveness and ease of access, and included opportunities for interactive learning.

CONCLUSION:

Many excellent online resources for critical care medicine education currently exist, and the number is likely to continue to increase. Opportunities for improvement in many websites include more active engagement of learners, upgrading navigation abilities, incorporating an editorial process, and providing appropriate attribution for graphics and media.

Changing Metrics of Organ Procurement Organization Performance in Order to Increase Organ Donation Rates in the United States

The shortage of deceased-donor organs is compounded by donation metrics that fail to account for the total pool of possible donors, leading to ambiguous donor statistics. We sought to assess potential metrics of organ procurement organizations (OPOs) utilizing data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) from 2009-2012 and State Inpatient Databases (SIDs) from 2008-2014. A possible donor was defined as a ventilated inpatient death ≤75 years of age, without multi-organ system failure, sepsis, or cancer, whose cause of death was consistent with organ donation. These estimates were compared to patient-level data from chart review from two large OPOs. Among 2,907,658 inpatient deaths from 2009-2012, 96,028 (3.3%) were a "possible deceased-organ donor." The two proposed metrics of OPO performance were: (1) donation percentage (percentage of possible deceased-donors who become actual donors; range: 20.0-57.0%); and (2) organs transplanted per possible donor (range: 0.52-1.74). These metrics allow for comparisons of OPO performance and geographic-level donation rates, and identify areas in greatest need of interventions to improve donation rates. We demonstrate that administrative data can be used to identify possible deceased donors in the US and could be a data source for CMS to implement new OPO performance metrics in a standardized fashion.