Transplant scandals Doctors without trust

Doctors lose confidence in organ donation after transplant scandals

05/26/2014

The transplant scandals have not only damaged the trust of the population and with it the potential of donors, but also the opinion of doctors and nurses. This is the conclusion of a recent study.

Doctors and nurses have changed their attitude to organ donation
The manipulation of organ donation has had a negative impact on the opinion of the citizens, and therefore of potential donors, on the organ donation system, as shown by the steadily declining transplant numbers. But also doctors and nurses in clinics have changed their attitude to organ donation to negative. This is the result of a research team led by Thomas Breidenbach, Managing Director of the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation (DSO) in Bavaria, like the news magazine „The mirror“ reported.

Basically positive attitude to organ donation
In a study, the scientists evaluated nearly 3,000 questionnaires from 50 Bavarian clinics. The addressees were doctors and nurses working in intensive care units, operating theaters and in the field of brain death diagnostics. While 81 percent of respondents said they had a generally positive attitude towards organ donation, 28 percent noted that recent developments had negatively impacted this attitude. Only 57 percent of the respondents would wish for a transplant in an emergency. This is significantly less than in the entire population, in which 85 percent have this desire.

Physicians and nurses insufficiently informed
From the point of view of the doctors interviewed, the manipulations were favored by the pressure of competition among the transplant centers. Many nurses, on the other hand, regard the corruptibility or greed of individual physicians as the main cause. Moreover, the majority of respondents do not believe that the policy measures will prevent manipulation in the future. A frightening conclusion from the researchers' point of view: 90 percent of doctors and nurses said they were not well informed about organ donation issues, especially with regard to caring for relatives. DSO doctor Breidenbach alarmed this training needs: „The commitment of clinic staff has a decisive influence on the realization of organ donations.“

Error in brain death diagnostics
The „Southgerman newspaper“ (SZ) had reported errors in brain death diagnostics in February. Accordingly, even death certificates had to be corrected later due to incorrect diagnoses. In the past three years, doctors have provided brain failure diagnoses in ten patients without compliance with the guidelines. It was in no case come to that a living organs were removed, reported then Rainer Hess, CEO of the DOS, the news agency „dpa“. As the SZ wrote, the cause lies in insufficient training of doctors in the field of brain death diagnostics.

Number of organ donors has reached a new low
Also Breidenbach had in an interview with „Mirror online“ admitted that doctors in smaller hospitals who are less likely to come into contact with the subject of brain death may not always know exactly the guidelines. „The question of whether one is really dead touches everyone in their worries“, so Breidenbach. „That's why it's so important that our control system works and we get the mistakes right.“ According to the DSO, there are currently 10,778 people waiting for a donor organ nationwide. 8,000 of them need a new kidney. As the DSO reported in its annual report, this could be about three times as many people as kidney transplants could be taught. According to the DSO, the number of organ donors has reached a new low last year. (Sb)