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Presenter: Beatrice, Pelleriaux, Sterrebeek, Belgium
Authors: Leo Roels, Beatrice Pelleriaux, Jongwon Ha, Tomonori Hasegawa, Jacqueline Smits
Educational efforts impacting on Critical Care staff’s attitudes towards donation: Donor Action data from Korea and Japan
Leo Roels1, Beatrice Pelleriaux1, Jongwon Ha2, Tomonori Hasegawa3, Jacqueline Smits4
1Donor Action Foundation, Linden, Belgium, 2Korea Organ Donation Agency, Seoul, Korea, 3Toho University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, 4Eurotransplant International Foundation, Leiden, Netherlands
Background. Critical Care (CC) staff’s attitudes towards donation vary between professional categories, hospitals and countries, depending, amongst other co-factors, on educational efforts, and, hence, may influence donation rates.
Methods. 17,860 Donor Action (DA) Hospital Attitude Survey (HAS) questionnaires (Korea: n=1,454, Japan: n=16,406), collected between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2012, were entered into the DA database to compare CC staff’s attitudes towards donation as well as their confidence levels with donation related tasks and their training needs. In Korea, a governmentally supported educational program by skilled transplant coordinators (81 training sessions in 27 hospitals) preceded this survey.
Results. General support for donation was higher amongst Korean medical/nursing (M/N) staff (87.3%) compared to their Japanese colleagues (73.1%, P <.0001). Whilst 52.3% of Korean M/N staff would donate their own organs, only 41% of Japanese colleagues would do so (P<.0001). In Japan, 22.3% of M/N staff would object to donating their relative’s organs, versus only 15.4% in Korea (P<.0001). Confidence levels with referring a potential donor, explaining brain death (BD) or introducing the subject of donation were 66.9, 48.3 and 31.7% respectively amongst Korean staff, against only 9.5, 2.9 and 2.6% in Japan (P<.0001). BD was accepted as a valid determination of death by 84.6% of medical and 63.3% of nursing staff in Korea, versus only 60.9 and 32.9% in Japan (P<.0001). In Korea, 27% of medical and 17% of nursing staff on average had received specific training on organ donation related issues vs. only 6.5 and 4.5% in Japan (P<.01).
Conclusions. Data presented suggests a strong correlation between self-reported attitudes, skills and confidence levels and specific education received in 2 neighbouring Asian countries with an otherwise comparable socio-economic, technical level and religious background. Further investigations to understand the subtle cultural disparities that may explain diverging relationships amongst CC and transplant professionals may help to adapt and export the ‘Korean model’ of targeted training of CC staff to other Asian countries and will ultimately increase donation rates in these countries.
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