Qualitative Study on the Influencing Factors and Countermeasures Against Job Burnout Among Organ Donation Coordinators

Abstract

Background: Most organ donation coordinators suffer varying degrees of anxiety, depression and poor sleep caused by constant work pressure, and their professional identity is only at a medium level. All of this leads to a great risk of job burnout.Objective: To identify the influencing factors of and effective countermeasures against job burnout among organ donation coordinators.Method: Semistructured interviews were used for data collection. In-person or phone interviews were conducted from December 2017 to June 2018.Results: 12 organ donation coordinators who came from 7 different provinces and cities in China were interviewed. The interview data were sorted, and relevant topics were extracted and summarized in terms of two aspects, namely, factors that influenced job burnout in organ donation coordinators and effective countermeasures for dealing with job burnout. Conclusion:Factors influencing job burnout among organ donation coordinators include personal factors, job responsibilities, salary and benefit factors, and donor family factors. Measures to help organ donation coordinators effectively address burnout include self-regulation, social support, and positive events.

Exploring the Relationship Between Professional Identity and Psychological Resilience of Organ Donation Coordinators in Zhejiang Province (China)

“…The National Health and Family Planning Commission in 2013 issued the regulations on the staffing of coordinators and clearly stated that coordinators must have a medical professional background, which indicates that China has carried out specific work in strengthening the professional literacy of coordinators, but related research shows that coordinators are experiencing varying degrees of anxiety, depression, poor sleep quality ( 7 ), associated with work pressure. The overall stress level is high because of low social attention, unclear career direction ( 8 ), and high mobility in staffing ( 9 ). Compared with the more mature experience in other countries, the position of coordinators should be filled by people who understand both medicine and ethics, psychology, and a good state of mind.…”

Work-related problems faced by coordinators of organ, cell, and tissue transplantations in Poland and possible ways of ameliorating them

“…In a survey of Polish transplant coordinators (POLTRANSPLANT 2017), coordinators from hospitals with small numbers of reported potential donors identified lack of support from co-workers and supervisors as the most important factor interfering with organ donations. In addition, support from supervisors can help transplant coordinators solve problems and reduce work-related stress (Luo et al 2020), and social support was found to be negatively-related to emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment in this population (Mao et al 2018). Negative correlations between burnout and social support from supervisors have been reported in the populations of employees of cell and tissue banks (Kaminski et al 2018) and transplant coordinators (Bury et al 2019).…”

“…At the same time, however, half of them disclosed that the most difficult aspect of their work was direct contact with the families of potential donors, while almost every third complained of daily contact with death and human tragedies, and every sixth endorsed phone conversations with the families of potential donors about donation. Because only very few of the transplant coordinators reported issues with having to participate in harvesting of organs, tissues, and cells, or seeing dead human bodies or their fragments, it appears that contacts with grieving members of donor families, which can give raise to significant psychological distress (Luo et al 2020;Silva e Silva et al 2020), are the most difficult work-related issue in this population. This is reflected by the finding that almost half of the subjects in our study pointed out to training (e.g., how Participating on organ/tissue harvesting 7 6.4…”

Organ donation decision-making in ICU patients: from the perspectives of organ coordinators and physicians in China – a qualitative study

“…Organ coordinators’ main job is to identify potential organ donors, collect clinical information, communicate with donor families and facilitate the smooth implementation of organ donation 12 13. In China, ICU physicians are the first to encounter potential organ donors.…”