Saturday, March 2, 2013

Telephone requests for eye and tissue donation: concerns expressed by families and the impact of the donor registry

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23448828


 2013 Mar;23(1):92-8. doi: 10.7182/pit2013948.

Telephone requests for donation: concerns expressed by families and the impact of the donor registry.

Source

Verble, Worth and Verble, Lexington, Kentucky.

Abstract

Context-The request process for eye and tissue donation is different from the process that families of organ donors experience, but the research into eye/tissue-only decision making has been sparse.
Objective-To determine the concerns of families approached over the phone for eye/tissue donations and to study the impact of the donor registry on those decisions.
Design, Setting and Participants-Written instrument filled out by family services coordinators while speaking with families about donation via phone in the San Diego, California, area during 2011.
Main Outcome Measures-Responses marked on a 21-item instrument, contextual notes, donor registrations, and decisions made.Results-With a 60% refusal rate, the most common reasons reported for declining donation are that the potential donor said during life he/she did not want to donate (26%) or that the family, not knowing the potential donor's wishes, opted not to donate (13%). Other specific reasons for not donating were as follows: wanting the body buried whole (8%), concerns about age and prior health (7%), and incompatibility with religion or culture (7%). Consenting families had different concerns: worries about delays (36%), the potential donors' age and health (25%), how the body might look for viewing (14%), the amount of paperwork (10%), for-profit status of beneficiaries (9%), international distribution (8%), and family disunity (8%). Registry-related refusals weighted against donations of tissues from registered donors amounted to a deficit of 92 potential donations. When donations lost to faulty assumptions based on public education are added, the deficit increases to 122 lost donations.

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