Communicating effectively about donation: an educational intervention to increase consent to donation

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.