Texas non—donor-hospital project: a program to increase organ donation in community and rural hospitals

Abstract

Identifying and recovering donors from community and rural hospitals present a challenge to organ procurement organizations. A study of non-donor hospitals in the United States was undertaken at Johns Hopkins University, which identified 31 hospitals (in one service area) with the facilities to accommodate organ donation, though an organ donor had not been produced in 3 years. The purpose of this study was to determine whether donors could be produced from these hospitals. A large, geographically dispersed OPO initiated a program consisting of (1) in-house coordinators, and (2) routine notification of all hospital deaths. Following implementation of this program, organ donation increased 387% among the targeted 25 hospitals. The number of hospitals producing at least 1 organ donor increased 133%. The number of organs recovered in the project increased 449%. In-house coordinators, by identifying potential donors and facilitating an organ donor awareness program, can increase the number of organ donors in hospitals with low, but real, donor potential.

Organ and tissue donation in clinical settings: a systematic review of the impact of interventions aimed at health professionals

“…The participants targeted in these interventions were mainly nurses and physicians. However, six of these studies involved hospital staff, without specifying which types of HPs were targeted [36,38,40,42,44,45]. Also, in six of the ten studies, the number of participants was not provided [36,37,41-44].…”

Strategies to increase organ donation: the role of critical care practitioners

“…This includes the intention to withdraw life‐sustaining treatment in patients (NICE, 2011). Six studies (Burris and Jacobs, 1996; Robertson, 1998; Shafer et al , 1998; Dickerson et al , 2002; Shafer et al , 2008; Graham et al , 2009) reported an increase in the number of donations when required referral was used in hospitals. Required referral is not standard practice in many critical care units and emergency departments and would require careful implementation.…”