A pilot study on transplant eligibility criteria: valuing the stories in numbers

The medical and nursing literature often seem divided between numerical, qualitative studies, and quantitative, narrative-based case histories. Rarely are the numbers generated by the first informed by the experiences and insights offered by the second type of study. This paper reports on a pilot study carried out at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, on a methodology combining qualitative and quantitative data. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a type of multicriterion decision making, focus groups were used to analyze survey-based organ transplant eligibility criteria. Through this process, a portrait of the limits of that data was generated by staff members. Organ transplant eligibility was chosen because of its importance, and very public discussions arising from high profile cases in Canada and the United States.