Organ donation and transplantation: Awareness and roles of healthcare professionals—A systematic literature review

Aims and objectives To examine the role of healthcare professionals in the organ donation and transplantation process. Background Globally, there remains a perennial disequilibrium between organ donation and organ transplantation. Several factors account for this disequilibrium; however, as healthcare professionals are not only strategically positioned as the primary intermediaries between organ donors and transplant recipients, but also professionally situated as the implementers of organ donation and transplantation processes, they are often blamed for the global organ shortage. Design Mixed‐method systematic review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta‐Analysis Protocols 2015 checklist. Methods Databases were searched including CINAHL, MEDLINE, Web of Science and EMBASE using the search terms “organ donation,” “healthcare professionals,” “awareness” and “roles” to retrieve relevant publications. Results Thirteen publications met the inclusion criteria. The global organ shortage is neither contingent upon unavailability of suitable organs nor exclusively dependent upon healthcare professionals. Instead, the existence of disequilibrium between organ donation and transplantation is necessitated by a web of factors. These include the following: healthcare professionals’ attitudes towards, and experience of, the organ donation and transplantation process, underpinned by professional education, specialist clinical area and duration of professional practice; conflicts of interests; ethical dilemmas; altruistic values towards organ donation; and varied organ donation legislations in different legal jurisdictions. Conclusion This review maintains that if this web of factors is to be adequately addressed by healthcare systems in different global and legal jurisdictions, there should be sufficient organs voluntarily donated to meet all transplantation needs. Relevance to clinical practice There is a suggestion that healthcare professionals partly account for the global shortage in organ donation, but there is a need to examine how healthcare professionals’ roles, knowledge, awareness, skills and competencies might impact upon the organ donation and transplantation process.