Critical Care staffs’ attitudes, confidence levels and educational needs correlate with countries’ donation rates: data from the Donor Action® database

Abstract

To investigate on the impact of Critical Care (CC) staffs' attitudes to donation, their acceptance of the brain death (BD) concept, their confidence with donation-related tasks and educational needs on national donation rates. Donor Action (DA) Hospital Attitude Survey (HAS) data were collected from 19 537 CC staff in 11 countries, including personal attitudes to donation, self-reported knowledge, involvement and comfort levels with donation-related tasks and educational requirements. Countries' donation performance was expressed as Procurement Efficiency Index (PEI) (organs procured and transplanted/deaths from eligible causes). National PEI rates correlated well with CC staffs' average support to donation (R = 0.700, P = 0.014), acceptance of the BD concept (R = 0.742, P = 0.007), confidence levels (R = 0.796, P = 0.002) and average educational requirements with donation-related tasks (R = -0.661, P = 0.025). Nurses reported significantly lower positive attitudes (P < 0.0001), acceptance of the BD concept (P < 0.0001), comfort levels (P < 0.0001) and requested more education (P = 0.0025) than medical staff members. DA's HAS is a powerful, standardized tool to assess CC staffs' attitudes and donation-related skills in different environments. Measures to improve countries' donation performance should focus on guidance and education of CC staff so as to ensure that all practitioners have sufficient knowledge and feel comfortable with donation-related issues.