Does organ donation legislation affect individuals' willingness to donate their own or their relative's organs? Evidence from European Union survey data

Abstract

Background: Maintaining adequately high organ donation rates proves essential to offering patients all appropriate and available treatment options. However, the act of donation is in itself an individual decision that requires a depth of understanding that interacts with the social setting and the institutional framework into which an individual is embedded. This study contributes to understanding factors driving organ donation rates by examining how country regulation, individuals' awareness of regulatory setting, social interactions and socio-demographic determinants influence individuals' willingness to donate their own organs or those of a relative.

Underlying wishes and nudged choices.

“…These include but not limited to the number of hospitals carrying out transplants, the number of intensive-care beds available, relative refusing consent to donate, religious and cultural responses to cadavers, and public attitudes to and awareness of organ donation (Merchant et al, 2008;Mossialos et al, 2008;Shepherd et al, 2014); which should be factored into the implementation of legislation systems in order to evaluate the success of these systems. Error bars are at 95% CI.…”

“Donate your organs, donate life!” Explicitness in policy instruments

“…Yet the evidence is most ambiguous regarding this factor. Several studies report that presumed consent is positively correlated with higher donation rates (Abadie and Gay 2006;Johnson and Goldstein 2003;Mossialos et al 2008). Others, however, find no clearly isolable influence of presumed consent on refusal rates (Bilgel 2012;Matesanz and Dominquez-Gil 2007;Simillis 2010).…”

“…This "reduces the effectiveness of prompted choice to increase the number of available organs" (Oliver 2015: 706). The legal model mainly influences the concrete wording of the organ donation request, which then interacts with population awareness (Mossialos et al 2008) and the attitudes of critical care staff (Roels et al 2010) to influence the calibration of the family approach at the hospital level (Manatschal and Thomann 2011). Overall, the practice of the family request in hospitals, to which I turn below, is vastly more important than the recommendation that the default entails.…”

“…Explicit awareness-raising campaigns like the Spanish ones influence the population's knowledge of and attitude towards organ donation. This reduces possible fears associated with organ donation, which can result in a greater desire to donate (Mossialos et al 2008;Schulz et al 2006). …”

Knowledge and Attitude of Bangladeshi Physicians towards Organ Donation and Transplantation

“…Most of the research evidence on this subject is from the more developed countries. One study done in European Union determined that more educated, younger age and expressing some sort of political affiliation determined willingness to donate one's own organs and consent to the donation of those of a relative 5 . From the developing world, a study conducted in Filipinos using qualitative theme analysis identified major themes related to organ donation as: awareness of organ donation, family beliefs, religion, attitude/emotions and personal experience with organ donation, health profession, and cultural issues 6 .…”