Knowledge and Attitude of Nurses in Organ Donation and the Influence of Interventions-A Systematic Review

Introduction: Nurses are important paramedical staff taking care of potential organ donors, poor knowledge and attitude of nurses towards organ donation may worsen the nonavailability of organ for transplantation. Hence, in such scenario the nurses should be given interventions in the form of workshops, audiovisual presentations and certificate courses to develop their knowledge and attitude in organ donation. Aim: In the present systematic review, an attempt was made to find the current scenario of knowledge and attitude of nurses and the effectiveness of the programmes conducted to foster them. Materials and Methods: The MEDLINE database was used to retrieve the articles. The MeSH term used was "Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) study, organ donation, nurses, organ transplantation, workshop, education programme, intervention". The Pubmed advanced search was used. Boolean operator 'AND' was used in between the MeSH terms in the advanced search. A descriptive analysis was done on the data available in the articles. Results: From the literature it was evident that in most of the circumstances the knowledge and attitude regarding organ donation among nurses is not satisfactory. However, few studies state that nurses do possess adequate knowledge regarding organ donation and are influenced by many factors like age, experience and the unit in which they work. The studies concluded that the knowledge of nurses has improved after the intervention programmes. Conclusion: From this systematic review it was found that the knowledge and attitude of nurses towards organ donation is not to the expected level and the interventions like workshop and peer education do improve their knowledge to considerable level.