The need for donor organs has gradually grown as transplantation success rates have improved. Due to a scarcity of donor organs, legislation has been enacted mandating hospital professionals to routinely present families with the choice to authorise organ donation. Practitioners play a critical role in locating possible donors while also ensuring that survivors’ requirements are satisfied. Patients who pass away are more likely to qualify as cornea, skin, or bone donors. It is critical to consider the ethical considerations inherent to organ donation as well as survivors’ responses to donation requests. If presented responsibly, the option to authorise a gift of organ can provide solace to survivors while also providing the advantages of transplantation to others on organ waiting lists.
Because one patient may give eight organs, saving eight lives, it is even more crucial to educate and raise awareness among potential donors and their families. It is critical to teach medical practitioners to optimise and identify prospective donors under the legal and ethical considerations. The rate of organ donation remains steady, even though demand is always growing. Lakhs of patients with organ failure await donors, but only a few hundreds of organ donations occur. The current situation in India is unimpressive; there is a greater need but less availability.
Discussions with families about severe brain injury, brain death, and organ donation after brain death are a subset of end-of-life decision-making and care in the intensive care unit; however, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for practitioners to promote good end-of-life decision-making vary greatly. The government’s rules of participation require that individuals who submit requests for organ donation from family members get special training. Practitioners play an important role in caring for patients and families in these situations, and their care is enhanced by training, attention to the special challenges involved, and collaboration with experts from organ procurement organisations.
Due to a lack of awareness of the regulations, most practitioners are still hesitant to proclaim patients brain dead. They are terrified of falling within the medico-legal aspect; therefore, they hesitate from making an informed decision. Most practitioners are unskilled in counselling and preparing families for organ donation; instead, they connect with the families in a non-professional and unemotional manner. Myths in the organ donation procedure have a negative impact on prospective progress in the sector. The most comprehensive skill-based online Organ Donation course available in the market for practitioners. The course aims to improve their skills helping them to facilitate closure of the gap between the need and availability. It establishes the concept of potential organ donor, organ registration, organ transplantation, optimization, which is considered the backbone of the entire process. The Organ Donation course educates practitioners with the action plan comprising antibiotics, fluids, hemodynamics, hormonal therapy to optimize the ideal donor and more. Developing the concept of donation after cardiac death is also considered in the course as the future of organ donation that will help professionals to shorten the gap.
