Organ donation and transplantation in general practice

Raising public awareness of organ donation is high on the national agenda, but the magnitude of the challenge is not well clarified. We investigated the attitudes and experience of general practitioners (GPs) regarding organ donation. A survey of 200 GPs working in Ireland revealed that a minority provided donor cards (38%) or displayed information regarding organ donation (28.2%). Although 81.3% felt comfortable discussing organ donation, just 4.8% broached the subject with their patients or asked them to discuss the issue with their families. 88.7% of GPs could not remember any instance of a patient asking for counselling regarding organ donation in the past 3 months. We found that 31.7%, 24.1% and 34.4% felt informed to advise patients on organ procurement, living donation or immunosuppression medications, respectively. We identified a lack of dialogue and unfamiliarity in primary healthcare regarding organ donation, which may be targeted to increase organ donation rates.