Only 50 per cent of doctors believe that public opinion strongly supports the concept of organ donation, a health service research conference in University College Cork heard yesterday.
Researcher Dr Mary Smith of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland claimed organ-retention scandals are having a major impact on organ-donation levels around the State.
The controversy, she says, couldn't come at a worse time, as Ireland needs to triple its donation rates to meet anticipated needs.
"There has been so much in the way of adverse attention directed to organ retrieval that the benefits of organ donation are getting lost. Also if health-care professionals assume the public is no longer on side it has a knock on effect within the transplant community... We need a good campaign to tell people about organ donation."
Researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons recently carried out a survey of over 1,000 health-care professionals who work in intensive care units.
The survey revealed that 44 per cent of nurses agree that organ-retention controversies have affected staff confidence in organ-donated-related activities. However, only 37 per cent of doctors said the scandals had any impact on their work.
While close to 70 per cent of doctors expressed confidence at introducing the concept of organ donation to families of the bereaved, only 40 per cent of nurses felt as comfortable with the issue. Dr Smith said it was vital that all medical staff receive sufficient training and education in the area of discussing organ donation with families.
"Unless staff are confident in their task it can militate against their being able to achieve optimum results. It is generally felt that nurses are less confident than doctors. I think they are less confident because there is confusion in the public mind between organ retention and donation. There is a perceived loss of trust in public health professionals."
The survey also indicated that nurses perceive that doctors aren't sufficiently proactive towards organ procurement.
Surprisingly, the questionnaire revealed that only 35 per cent of doctors surveyed carried an organ donation card, as compared to 57 per cent of nurses. However, doctors scored highly on the issue of donating their own organs at 90 per cent, with nurses at 84 per cent.
One of Dr Smith's recommendations was that the role of nursing staff in organ donation needs to be examined. As it stands nurses "lead" families but it is left to doctors to request donation.
Many nurses surveyed said they had built up an intense relationship with the families of the bereaved in hospital and would probably be better suited to discussing the issue of organ donation than doctors.
Overall it was felt that there was a need for a transplant forum to be established to further debate on different aspects of organ donation.