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Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University

BACKGROUND: Organ shortage remains a major challenge in transplantation medicine. The aim of this study was to analyze the public’s willingness to donate organs and to observe whether increased knowledge about organ donation has an effect on the attitude toward organ donation. The study in particula...

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Autores principales: Heuer, Matthias, Radunz, Sonia, von Hugo, Friederike, Kirchner, Carmen, Wittenburg, Natalie, Stammen, Karl-Heinz, Paul, Andreas, Kaiser, Gernot
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25312794
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40001-014-0043-y
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author Heuer, Matthias
Radunz, Sonia
von Hugo, Friederike
Kirchner, Carmen
Wittenburg, Natalie
Stammen, Karl-Heinz
Paul, Andreas
Kaiser, Gernot
author_facet Heuer, Matthias
Radunz, Sonia
von Hugo, Friederike
Kirchner, Carmen
Wittenburg, Natalie
Stammen, Karl-Heinz
Paul, Andreas
Kaiser, Gernot
author_sort Heuer, Matthias
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Organ shortage remains a major challenge in transplantation medicine. The aim of this study was to analyze the public’s willingness to donate organs and to observe whether increased knowledge about organ donation has an effect on the attitude toward organ donation. The study in particular tested the efficacy of using electronic communication as a means to distribute information. METHODS: In 2011, an Email invitation to participate in a survey was sent to the employees of the University Duisburg-Essen. The survey consisted of a two-piece questionnaire with an informational intervention on organ donation between the questionnaires. The technical design ensured that interviewees remained anonymous and could participate only once. RESULTS: In total, 1,818 interviewees completed the questionnaire. Of the respondents, 42% were organ-donor card holders (which was consistent among genders and age groups), whereas 87% of the interviewees would support an organ donation for themselves. Of the interviewees who did not possess an organ-donor card, 67% were positively inclined toward holding one in future after reading the interventional information. CONCLUSIONS: The considerable improvement in attitude toward carrying an organ-donor card after reading the information illustrates the effectiveness of distributing concise information on organ donation. To increase the willingness to donate organs, it is of great importance to inform the public and facilitate the documentation of a decision to donate. The present study has proven the use of Email communication to be an important asset to this process.
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spelling pubmed-42073272014-10-28 Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University Heuer, Matthias Radunz, Sonia von Hugo, Friederike Kirchner, Carmen Wittenburg, Natalie Stammen, Karl-Heinz Paul, Andreas Kaiser, Gernot Eur J Med Res Research BACKGROUND: Organ shortage remains a major challenge in transplantation medicine. The aim of this study was to analyze the public’s willingness to donate organs and to observe whether increased knowledge about organ donation has an effect on the attitude toward organ donation. The study in particular tested the efficacy of using electronic communication as a means to distribute information. METHODS: In 2011, an Email invitation to participate in a survey was sent to the employees of the University Duisburg-Essen. The survey consisted of a two-piece questionnaire with an informational intervention on organ donation between the questionnaires. The technical design ensured that interviewees remained anonymous and could participate only once. RESULTS: In total, 1,818 interviewees completed the questionnaire. Of the respondents, 42% were organ-donor card holders (which was consistent among genders and age groups), whereas 87% of the interviewees would support an organ donation for themselves. Of the interviewees who did not possess an organ-donor card, 67% were positively inclined toward holding one in future after reading the interventional information. CONCLUSIONS: The considerable improvement in attitude toward carrying an organ-donor card after reading the information illustrates the effectiveness of distributing concise information on organ donation. To increase the willingness to donate organs, it is of great importance to inform the public and facilitate the documentation of a decision to donate. The present study has proven the use of Email communication to be an important asset to this process. BioMed Central 2014-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4207327/ /pubmed/25312794 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40001-014-0043-y Text en © Heuer et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Heuer, Matthias
Radunz, Sonia
von Hugo, Friederike
Kirchner, Carmen
Wittenburg, Natalie
Stammen, Karl-Heinz
Paul, Andreas
Kaiser, Gernot
Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title_full Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title_fullStr Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title_full_unstemmed Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title_short Online Intervention Study - Willingness to donate organs among the employees of a German University
title_sort online intervention study - willingness to donate organs among the employees of a german university
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25312794
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40001-014-0043-y
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