Abstract
Context-Families' refusal to consent to solid organ donation is a major contributor to the organ deficit in the United States. Previous research has identified organ procurement coordinators as best able to obtain consent from families; however, few studies have examined the effects of coordinator training programs on consent rates.
Objective-To test the effects of the Communicating Effectively About Donation intervention on the rate of family consent to solid organ donation.
Design-A nonrandomized repeated measures design.
Setting and Participants-Participants included 17 hospitals, 502 donor-eligible patients and their families, and 22 coordinators from an organ procurement organization in Ohio.
Intervention-Coordinators were given in-service training on the use of effective relational and affective communication techniques through a day-long interactive workshop and simulated donation scenarios.
Main Outcome Measures-Families' final donation decision and coordinators' donation-related behaviors.
Results-Training of coordinators was associated with increases in coordinators' comfort speaking with patients' families about donation and answering donation-related questions, in the amount of time coordinators spent discussing donation with family members, and in the number of donation-related topics discussed with families. Consent rates increased from 46.3% to 55.5% after the intervention.
Conclusions-The results suggest that improving coordinators' communication skills may be a fruitful avenue for increasing the rate of family consent to donation; however, a more definitive test of the training is needed to confirm the intervention's effectiveness. (Progress in Transplantation. 2009; 19:35-43)