Attitude of Healthcare Professionals: A Major Limiting Factor in Organ Donation from Brain-Dead Donors

Public attitude toward deceased donor organ recovery in Poland is quite positive, with only 15% opposing to donation of their own organs, yet actual donation rate is only 16/pmp. Moreover, donation rate varies greatly (from 5 to 28 pmp) in different regions of the country. To identify the barriers of organ donation, we surveyed 587 physicians involved in brain death diagnosis from regions with low (LDR) and high donation rates (HDR). Physicians from LDR were twice more reluctant to start diagnostic procedure when clinical signs of brain death were present (14% versus 5.5% physicians from HDR who would not diagnose death, resp.). Twenty-five percent of LDR physicians (as opposed to 12% of physicians from HDR) would either continue with intensive therapy or confirm brain death and limit to the so-called minimal therapy. Only 32% of LDR physicians would proceed with brain death diagnosis regardless of organ donation, compared to 67% in HDR. When donation was not an option, mechanical ventilation would be continued more often in LDR regions (43% versus 26.7%; P < 0.01). In conclusion, low donation activity seems to be mostly due to medical staff attitude.