The central role of the family in the organ and tissue donation process

Abstract

Since there is an increasing need for organ transplantation and the amount of donors does not meet the demand, this leads to death many of those who are waiting for an organ. Purpose: ¨To deepen the knowledge on the organ and tissue donation process, and to discuss the family’s role and responsibility whether to consent or not. Methods: To make a review of the literature on the MedLine and Scielo databases. Books and articles listed as bibliographical references and resources in the indexed literature were analyzed. The words death brain, family and organ and tissue donation were matched. Discussion: To approach family members to request organ donation is the starting point to the donation process, that when the patient is deemed to be in brain death is often concluded with the family’s decision whether to consent or not. The spreading of information is a predominant factor that leads to low levels of organ donation. However, there are psychological and social factors that deserve special attention, as they are critical to the development of strategies to encourage the effective organ donation in our society. To express the wish to donate or not while one is still alive eases the family’s burden to make such a decision. Conclusion: Dealing with the issue of death through the entire process is a very hard situation, since the family is facing an unexpected death and it has to deal with the imponderable human finitude. This is the major reason for the importance of the technical, ethical and emotional ability of the health team taking care of potential donors together with those professionals responsible for seeking out and approaching the family is. It is essential to understand and respect several issues the family has to face, in order to successfully present the possibility to the organ donation.