Psychosocial factors influencing nurses' involvement with organ and tissue donation

This paper focuses on the first phase of a 3-year study that explored the psychosocial factors that influence nurses' willingness to discuss post-mortem donation intentions with relatives of potential organ and tissue donors. The United Kingdom's donation system is dependent upon such discussions taking place. A cross-sectional survey of 776 randomly selected nurses, from two health regions in the United Kingdom, found that personal negative attitudes to aspects of donation and transplantation, fears and misconceptions about the donation process, clinical area of work, past experience, and socio-historical factors influence discussion behaviour. Knowledge deficits were discovered, together with requests for general information about the donation process and specific information about the organ and tissue donor exclusion criteria.