Australian perioperative nurses’ attitudes, levels of knowledge, education and support needs related to organ donation and procurement surgery: A national survey

Perioperative nurses assist in organ procurement surgery; however, there is a dearth of information of how they encounter making conscientious objection requests or refusals to participate in organ procurement surgery. Organ procurement surgical procedures can present to the operating room ad hoc and can catch a nurse who may not desire to participate by surprise with little opportunity to refuse as a result of staffing, skill mix or organizational work demands. This paper that stems from a larger doctoral research study exploring the experiences of perioperative nurses participating in multi-organ procurement surgery used a grounded theory method to develop a substantive theory of the nurses' experiences. This current paper aimed to highlight the experiences of perioperative nurses when confronted with expressing a conscientious objection towards their participation in these procedures. A number of organizational and cultural barriers within the healthcare organization were seen to hamper their ability in expressing a conscience-based refusal, which lead to their reluctant participation. Perioperative nurses must feel safe to express a conscientious objection towards these types of surgical procedures and feel supported in doing so by their respective hospital organizations and not be forced to participate unwillingly.

The introduction and advancement of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has resulted in a reciprocal decline in exposure to open surgery during urology residency training. We propose organ procurement surgery as a potential vehicle to facilitate an increase in open surgical experience among trainees. We define the surgical case volume for organ procurement surgeries currently performed by urology residents in Canada, and determine what capacity exists for expansion. Data on organ procurement surgeries were extracted for Canadian urology residents case-logs between 2005 and 2009. Case-logs were anonymously analyzed through the voluntary self-reporting program T-Res (Resilience Software Inc.). National deceased organ donor data were obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The graduating Canadian urology resident has performed an average of 0.95 organ procurement surgeries during 5 years of training. An average of 469.6 procurement surgeries were performed yearly in Canada between 2005 and 2009. The theoretical capacity exists for each graduating resident to perform an additional 16.3 organ procurements during residency. With the establishment of MIS as standard of care for many urologic surgeries, the decrease in open operative experience is concerning. Innovative ways to enrich open surgical experience may be required, and increased formal incorporation of organ procurements into urology residency training curriculum may help fill the void.

Worldwide, operating rooms have seen the re-emergence of donation after cardiac death organ donors to increase the number of available organs. There is limited information on the issues perioperative nurses encounter when caring for donor patients after cardiac death who proceed to organ procurement surgery. The purpose of this paper is to report a subset of findings derived from a larger study highlighting the difficulties experienced by perioperative nurses when encountering donation after cardiac death organ donors and their family within the operating room during organ procurement surgery from an Australian perspective. A qualitative grounded theory method was used to explore perioperative nurses’ (n = 35) experiences of participating in multi-organ procurement surgery. This paper reports a subset of findings of the perioperative nurses’ experiences directly related to donation after cardiac death procedures drawn from a larger grounded theory study. Participants revealed four aspects conceptualised as: ‘witnessing the death of the donation after cardiac death donor’; ‘exposure to family’; ‘witnessing family grief’ and ‘stepping into the family’s role by default’. Perioperative nurses’ experiences with donation after cardiac death procedures are complex, challenging and demanding. Targeted support, education and training will enhance the perioperative nurses’ capabilities and experiences of caring for the donation after cardiac death donor and their family with the operating room context.

To discuss and explore the levels of support provided to perioperative nurses when participating in multi-organ procurement surgery and the impact to their overall well-being. Assisting within multi-organ procurement surgical procedures has been recognised to impact on the well-being of perioperative nurses leaving little opportunity for them to recover from their participation or to seek available support resources. To date, this area has remained largely unexplored with limited evidence of how nurses manage and cope with these procedures, in addition to the support received in the workplace. A qualitative grounded theory method. The study was informed by perioperative nurses (n=35) who had previous participatory experience in these surgical procedures from two Australian states. Theoretical sampling directed the collection of data via semistructured in-depth interviews. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method. Three components of levels of support were identified from the data: lacking support within the operating room organisation; surgical team support and access to external professional support. These findings offer new insights into how nurses manage and cope with their participation in organ procurement surgical procedures andwhat types of support resources can be seen as barriers or enablers to their overall experiences. The need for timely and adequate support is vital to their overall well-being and future participation in organ procurement surgery. These findings have the potential to guide further research with implications for clinical initiatives and practices, looking at new ways of supporting perioperative nurses within the clinical environment both locally and internationally. Healthcare organisations need to acknowledge the emotional, psychosocial and psychological health and well-being of nurses impacted by these surgical procedures and provide appropriate and timely clinical support within the work environment.

Objectives：The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the diagnostic validity of the Korean version of short form (15 item version) Geriatric Depression Scale (SGDS-K) was maintained well in the community dwelling elderly. Methods：In a face-to-face household survey conducted in Korea, 2,004 subjects aged more than 65 were interviewed by trained interviewers. 63 subjects diagnosed as dementia were excluded. The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and SGDS-K were administered. Major depressive disorder (MDD) and minor depressive disorder (MnDD) were diagnosed with the diagnostic section of depressive disorder of the Korean version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (K-CIDI) according to DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The sensitivity, the specificity and optimal cut-off point estimation and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis were performed to investigate the diagnostic validity of the SGDS-K to screen MDD and MnDD. The diagnostic validity tests were also compared between two groups (with cognitive impairment and without cognitive impairment) divided by the MMSE scores. Results：We suggest a score of 8 (sensitivity 0.9365, specificity 0.7603) as optimal cut-off score of SGDS-K for screening MDD and a score of 6 (sensitivity 0.7898, specificity 0.6586) as optimal cut-off score for screening both MDD and MnDD. The area under ROC curve (AUC) was 0.900 for screening MDD and 0.797 for both MDD and MnDD. In the community dwelling elderly suffering from cognitive impairment, the sensitivity and specificity were 0.9500, 0.6870 with a cut off score of 8 for screening MDD and 0.8409, 0.5691 with a cut off score of 6 for screening both MDD and MnDD. The AUC was 0.893 for MDD and 0.767 for both MDD and MnDD. Conclusion：The SGDS-K was useful in screening MDD, both MDD and MnDD in the community dwelling elderly and also useful in the elderly suffering from cognitive impairment.

Factors Influencing Attitude Toward Organ and Tissue Donation Among Patients in Primary Clinic, Sabah, Malaysia

To examine the mediating role of coping flexibility in the relationship between traumatic experiences and attitudes toward organ donation among healthcare workers involved in organ procurement surgery. This was a cross-sectional study. Data were collected from 170 healthcare workers with experience in organ procurement surgeries for brain-dead patients at 4 hospitals in South Korea between June 16 and September 30, 2021. The study utilized questionnaires assessing traumatic experience, coping flexibility and attitude toward organ donation. Data were analyzed using the PROCESS macro (IBM SPSS Statistics 28.0). Coping flexibility significantly mediated the relationship between traumatic experiences and attitudes toward organ donation. Traumatic experiences related to organ procurement surgery negatively influenced coping flexibility, while higher coping flexibility was associated with more positive attitudes toward organ donation. Developing educational programs to enhance coping flexibility and regularly assess psychological well-being may improve healthcare workers’ attitudes toward organ donation and support their mental health after trauma exposure.

International Operating Room Nurses' Challenges in Providing Person-Centered Care During Organ Procurement Surgery

To demonstrate how metaphor method can be employed in health care research, through a rainbow metaphor to conceptualise lived experiences, and represent a sense of verisimilitude, in a phenomenological study of international nurses' experiences of organ procurement procedures. International operating room nurses are likely to form unique attitudes towards multi-organ procurement. Phenomenology is used to focus on discovering human experiences and the meanings of certain phenomena. Phenomenological writing can mediate people's reflections and actions, measure people's thoughtfulness and help people to see and show lived experiences from their lifeworlds. Metaphor was used to interpret meanings of international operating room nurses' experiences in organ procurement surgery. The meanings were identified through a phenomenological approach informed by the work of van Manen. A metaphor method was used to interpret and understand the lived experiences of eighteen international OR nurses recruited from nine different countries. Thematic data analysis was used to portray their lived experiences in organ procurement procedure. Using a rainbow as metaphor, a vivid picture was portrayed reflecting international OR nurses' experiences and organ procurement journey in Australia as challenging, with mixed feelings. According to the relationship between certain colours and emotions, four essential themes evolved into the concept of a four-colour rainbow to signify the meanings of international OR nurses' experiences in organ procurement procedures. The essential themes represented by these four colours were as follows: Orange-"The surreality of experiencing death," Red-"Personal and professional challenges," Green-"Becoming stronger" and Purple-"My beliefs, my wishes." Interpreting the meanings of their organ procurement experiences using metaphor method provided valuable insights about what personal and professional challenges these nurses faced, how they coped and managed their challenges, what support and care they required from others, and suggestions for future practice. Operating room nurses in practice needed a range of workplace supports and the rainbow metaphor provides a suitable approach for reflection and understanding of their experiences in organ procurement, with a focus on international, newly graduated and less experienced nurses. Practice improvement is a likely outcome when nurses have a better understanding of their experiences and the experiences of others in their team and this will assist in identifying their knowledge and professional support needs. The method demonstrates how metaphor can be applied to understand clinical nursing situations.

Patient: Female, 39-year-oldFinal Diagnosis: Acute Fentanyl toxicity due to a Fentanyl injection in the hospitalSymptoms: UnresponsiveMedication: FentanylClinical Procedure: Endovascular coiling for the ruptured berry aneurysmSpecialty: NeurosurgeryObjective:Unusual clinical courseBackground:Organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) is a well-accepted practice in the medical, philosophical, and legal fields. It is important to determine the amount of time required for the loss of circulation to lead to irreversible brain loss, and ultimately brain death.Case Report:We report a rare case of organ donation after cardiac death. During organ procurement, it was noted that the patient’s aortic and renal arteries were pumping and pulsing, and her cardiopulmonary activities were back to unexpected levels. The organ procurement surgery was stopped. At the time, the patient was given Fentanyl and Lorazepam. Subsequently, she was pronounced dead again 18 minutes after she was initially pronounced dead. After a complete autopsy, the cause of death was determined to be acute Fentanyl toxicity due to a Fentanyl injection in the hospital. The manner of death was determined to be homicide.Conclusions:What should an attending physician do in the rare case that the organ procurement team notices the patient is still alive? It is our opinion that: first, the organ procurement team should leave the room immediately and withdraw from the case, and second, the attending physician should let nature run its course and refrain from excessive medical intervention.

Introduction: Nurses play a key role in the process of organ donation and transplantation, and previous studies have widely addressed the level of knowledge and attitude of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses in this regard. Considering the direct correlation between the positive attitude of the healthcare team, especially nurses, and the level of consent on organ donation, knowledge and attitude of nurses are important factors that have been assessed in several studies. However, no definite conclusions have been drawn in this regard. The present study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitude of ICU nurses toward organ donation and the related factors.Methods: A systematic review was conducted via searching in databases such as ProQuest, Medscape, MedlinePlus, MagIran, PubMed, and ScienceDirect to identify the articles published during 1990-2015 using keywords such as knowledge, attitude, organ donation, and nurses.Result: Awareness and knowledge are the main determinants of attitude in nurses, which should be applied in order to foster positive attitudes in the process of organ donation. Furthermore, extensive clinical knowledge should be acquired on organ donation and communication skills by ICU nurses through proper training programs.Conclusion: According to the results, using standard guidelines or scheduled training programs in nursing schools could improve the level of knowledge in nurses, which in turn enhances nursing performance. In addition, our findings indicated that positive attitude and knowledge of nurses could largely infleunce the viewpoint of families toward organ donation.

To explore and evaluate perioperative nurses' experience of organ procurement. Organ procurement is part of the organ donation process, and is typically performed in the perioperative setting. This experience may contribute to perioperative nurses' feelings of distress and negative attitudes towards organ donation. Systematic review of the literature. Primary research studies, published in the English language between 1990-2014 were identified, screened and appraised using Joanna Briggs Institute appraisal tools. Data extraction and analysis followed. The quality assessment resulted in seven qualitative and three quantitative research studies. The main findings were: (1) Perioperative nurses reported feeling emotionally distressed, challenged, lonely and physically drained throughout the entire organ procurement procedure. (2) Perioperative nurses reported finding their own unique self-coping strategies and ways of eliciting support. (3) Perioperative nurses had positive and negative attitudes towards organ donation. Perioperative nurses reported feelings of sadness, feeling challenged and physically drained through the entire organ procurement procedure, which were influenced by differing factors in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative stages. It is acknowledged that personal coping strategies and support are important to help perioperative nurses improve their psychological well-being, and their experiences and attitudes towards organ procurement and donation. The meaningfulness of these findings for practice policy and research is described. Perioperative nurses play a vital role in the organ procurement procedure and require ongoing support to ensure their psychological welfare, in particular, newly qualified or inexperienced nurses' participating in organ procurement.

International operating room nurses come from different regions of the world with diverse social and cultural backgrounds, religions, personal beliefs, and education. They are likely to form unique attitudes toward multi-organ procurement that potentially might affect their opinions and clinical practices. The aim of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of international operating room nurses participating in deceased organ procurement procedures in Australia. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 international operating room nurses. van Manen's phenomenological data analysis method was adopted to uncover and interpret meanings from these nurses' descriptions. Four essential themes emerged and evolved to signify the meanings of participants' experiences in organ procurement procedures: the surreality of death, personal and professional challenges, becoming stronger, and personal beliefs and wishes. The present study highlights the importance of cultural awareness in dealing with death, organ procurement, and interprofessional collaboration in the multi-cultural perioperative context. It is essential to provide clinical education and support around culture and practice transition for international operating room nurses to increase and maintain their professional confidence, career satisfaction, health, and well-being during organ procurement surgery.

Organ procurement surgery is a nocturnal pursuit with inherent risk of surgical misadventure. A single deceased donor organ procurement service was established in NSW to simplify retrieval of abdominal organs for transplantation in 17 Australian centres. An Organ Retrieval Report Form (ORRF) was created as a communication tool to facilitate identification of systemic problems.Methods: The surgical technique was standardised. ORRF were distributed with each kidney, liver, liver lobe and pancreas and returned to a data co‐ordinator. Identified problems were collated and reviewed by medical advisors. Fisher's exact test was used.Results: Compliance with ORRF return was 98%. 662 abdominal organs from 229 donors (10.4% DCD) were transplanted in 4 year period from July 2004. 18 organs were deemed unsuitable for transplantation, with 3 for avoidable reasons. Donor surgeons reported an iatrogenic injury to kidney and liver vessels in 7.4% (n = 13) and 4.4% (n = 5) of donors respectively (p = 0.45). The annual rate of donor surgeon recognition of injury increased with time from 5 to 14% (p = 0.067). Transplanting teams reported problems in an additional 23% of donors. Combining donor and retrieval reported data, structural injury occurred in 12.3% of kidneys, no pancreases (p = 0.008) and 4.8% of livers (p = 0.003). The rate of injury did not improve with time.Conclusions: The ORRF proved a valuable quality tool. Transplanting centre evaluation served to strengthen of retrieval protocols. The significant disproportion of kidney versus liver donor related injuries, dictated that the senior surgeon remained with the donor until removal of all donor organs rather than retreating to the back table after liver retrieval.

In February 2018, the Withdrawal of the Life-sustaining Treatment (WLST) Decision Act was legalized in Korea. Donation after circulatory death (DCD) after WLST was classified as DCD category III. We report the first case of successful organ donation after WLST in Korea. A 52-year-old male who experienced cerebral hemorrhage was a potential brain-dead donor with donation consent. During the first brain death examination, Babinski reflex was present, which disappeared two days later. Then, electroencephalography was performed five times at intervals of 2 to 3 days, according to the recommendation of a neurologist. The patient was transferred to the OR at 19:30 July 3, 2020. At 20:00, an intensive care unit specialist performed extubation and discontinued vasopressors. Oxygen saturation fell to < 70% in 1 minute, which signaled the beginning of functional warm ischemia. At 20:15, asystole was confirmed; after 5 minutes of “no-touch time,” circulatory death was declared. Organ procurement surgery was initiated, with surgeons performing the recipient surgery ready in the adjacent OR. Through the first successful DCD case, we expected that DCD will be actively implemented in Korea, saving the lives of patient waiting for transplantation and resolving the imbalance between organ receipt and donation.