The healthcare professionals’ support towards organ donation. An analysis of current practices, predictors, and consent rates in Apulian hospitals

Introduction. The paper investigates the critical care staff’s support towards organ donation by analysing how their attitude, knowledge, confidence, engagement, and training can act as predictors of donation consent rates. Our study focused on hospitals in the Apulia Region, Italy. Material and methods. The study employs a quantitative methodology based on a survey of healthcare professionals. The rate of consent to organ and tissue donation at the hospital level, given as a ratio of the permissions received to the proposals performed, was extracted from GEDON software related to the year 2019 report. For each Apulian participating hospital, we calculated a median score for each of the five predictors (namely, attitude, knowledge, confidence, engagement, and training) and investigated the association with hospital consent rates. Results. The results highlight that the engagement of the intensive care units’ healthcare personnel stands as the only influential predictor of the consent rate. Discussion. In Italy’s Apulia Region, efforts are needed to increase consent rates for organ donation. Strategies should concentrate on continuous support, as well as specific training of hospital staff involved in the donation process.