Organ donation-related psychosocial interventions: Towards a research-based guideline - A prospective observational study

Abstract

Introduction: Lack of consent from brain dead individuals' families is a major impediment for organ donation (OD) which is caused by several factors. Families need to receive information and support before, during, and after OD. Involving social workers in the transplantation team could be helpful. Methods: To develop a guideline for OD-related social work interventions, we conducted an inductive content analysis on experiences of experts providing services for families of brain dead individuals and searched scientific documents to identify eligible social work guidelines and studies. The participants were invited through purposeful and convenience sampling. Sampling was terminated when no additional information was acquired, and data saturation occurred. Results: Eleven experts who had experience in interviewing families of brain dead individuals participated voluntarily. In-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted individually for each participant. We shared the draft for the social work guidelines with experts and finalized the guidelines according to their comments. Recommendations for social work interventions for brain dead individuals' families in three main phases were categorized; before donation (process initiation and family consent), during donation, and after donation (short-term and long-term interventions). Conclusion: Social workers can get involved in transplantation teams to improve family protection during the consent seeking process and after the family's consent about donation.