Attitudes Of Young People In Australia Towards Organ Transplantation

The Problem of Organ Shortage Worldwide

Question:

Case study on Organ Donation.
 

1.1 Background and Overview

Organ transplantation is the choice of individuals, provides the life-saving opportunity for the people who have no other options instead of this. However, a worldwide shortage of organs is the biggest problem for many people suffering from organ damaged or failed cases. Therefore, organ donors are always of the highest priority for every hospital across the globe.

Australia holds 22^nd rank worldwide from the organ donation perspectives (Tong et al. 2013). Therefore, the researcher will try to identify the major reasons which strongly influence the young people of Australia either positively or negatively to engage in the organ donation activities. 

1.2 Purpose and Scope of the Research Study

Purpose: The main purpose of this research study is to identify the attitudes of young people especially the young adults of Australia about organ transplantation plans. As the organ transplantation process is not an easy task at all and needs appropriate medical expertise, proper knowledge and awareness should be there among people.

Scope: The scope of this research study is to analyze other factors like cultural beliefs or religious beliefs to meet up the organ donation challenges.

1.3 Summary

As the number of organ failing or damaging case in increased day by day in Australia, and the number of organ donors is comparatively less, the researcher will try to find out reasons that can have positive as well as negative impacts on the young people who are mostly the demandable ones on the global level. 

2.1 Problem Statement

The problem statement of this research will be used to identify the reasons and the knowledge of young people in Australia to stay away from organ transplantation activities. In Australia, 3 out of 10 people die every day due to the organ failing or damaged case. However, in accordance with that organ donors are very less in that country.

2.2 Research Questions

• What is the thinking of young adults about the organ donation?
• What factors influence or discourage the young people from donating organs?

2.3 Research Aims

Through this research, the researcher will try to examine the knowledge of young people of Australia of young adults and their perceptions on organ donation activity. In order to identify the behaviors, norms and attitudes of the young people the researcher will use a behavioral framework to measure the differences between opinions and thinking of people of Australia.   

2.4 Research Objectives

In order to conduct the research in a systematic fashion, researcher will set up the following objectives

• To identify the attitudes of young people of Australia towards organ transplantation
• To examine the knowledge of young adults of Australia about organ donation
• To identify the pros and cons of organ donation process

2.5 Research Hypothesis

Hypothesis 1

H₀: Knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and norms have significant impacts on organ donor activity

H₁: Knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and norms have no such significant impacts on organ donor activity

2.6 Research Paradigm

This research will be useful to identify the positive and negative factors which encourage or discourage the young people of Australia to donate their organs to save others lives. From this research study, the myths or misconceptions and benefits of organ donation plan can also be identified. 

3.1 Introduction

In the case of damaged organs or failure of organs, organ transplantation becomes very necessary. The organ is made up of cells and tissues which help to perform specific functions in the body. In general, there are no such limitations of age to donate organs. According to the medical expertise, from a newborn to the age of seventy-five years old person can donate organs (Bramstedt 2013). However, in the case of tissue donation, especially in the case of cornea the age limit should below 80 years.  In the case of long bones displacement or skin donations, there is no such age limit. In the case of tendons donations and heart valves donations, the age should not exceed more than 60 years. In this research proposal researcher is interested in the young people of Australia to know about their thinking and opinions about the organ donation facts.

The Ranking of Australia in Organ Donation Perspectives

3.2 Transplant Process and Procedure

On the operation bed, whenever a patient falls sick due to the organ is damaged or failed, doctors diagnose the whole body to check whether the patient is fit for organ transplantation or not. After the assessment, doctors contact with any local transplantation center or with the family members of the patient. According to Sheth et al. (2012), in such cases, doctors first choice is any family member of the patient. The main reason behind this is people from the same family mostly carried out successful transplantation than the others. On the contrary, Irving et al. (2012) opined that whether the family members or any outside person is considered for organ transplantation, doctors must do the screening first. Through the screening process, organ donors’ blood is taken for testing to check whether he or she has any transmissible diseases like HIV, Hepatitis or not.

Bramstedt and Dave (2013) mentioned that in two ways organ transplantation can be from two sources. Organs can be removed from the recently deceased people. This kind of organ transplantation is called the cadaveric organs. Organs from the cadaveric donors will be taken after their death. The second source of organ transplantation is from the living persons. This kind of organ donors especially comes from the same family of the patient. Martin et al. (2015) opined that living people can donate their organs in two ways. These donors either donate their one pair of their organ sets like kidney, eyes, or they can donate a portion of their organs like lobe of lung or portion of the liver. The patient is first made ready for organ transplantation, and then   the transplant center surgically replaces or removes the failed organs through some specific procedures as shown in the following figure

 

Figure 1: Transplantation Procedure

(Source: Hyde and Chambers 2014, pp-170)

After the transplantation, the patient is observed for a long time to get well soon. Clarke, Mitchell and Abraham (2014) pointed out that after the transplantation the patient can still face the problem of rejection where the body functions do not fit with the newly fitted organ.

3.3 Attitudes of Young People of Australia towards Organ Donations

The researcher is very much interested to know about the attitudes of young people about this organ donation concept, as it has been found out that the number of organ donors in Australia is much less than the other countries like the USA. Through this research, the researcher will be able to identify the behaviors of the young people of Australia weather they are interested to donate their organs for the family members or others or not. Giubilini (2015) stated that only ten people per million population are interested in donating their organs. In addition, these ten people are only interested in donating their organs only for their families and really do not bother for other people's lives. Reese, Boudville and Garg (2015) acknowledged that if any individual is interested in donating their organs, family members do not support it or consult with the doctors again and again. According to Hyde and White (2013), young people are more interested than the older people to donate their organs to save others' lives as they are more fearless to engages themselves in high risks tasks. Marck et al. (2013) opined that knowledge, norms, beliefs and attitudes are mostly influence the young people whether they should donate their organs or not. The major reason which is found out as a barrier of organ donation decision is a lack of knowledge. People stay away from these organ donation activities as there are several myths and confusions about it. People have a serious misconception that organ donation can lead to death. In addition, people always aware of the fact that after donating the organs, their bodies will not be able to perform properly. Positive, as well as negative attitudes and beliefs, are also having great influence on the young people of Australia and on their decisions to donate their organs. According to Siegel et al. (2014), negative attitudes and beliefs prevent the donors as they get feared that they will be declared dead prematurely, and their organs will be taken away without their concern. However, positive attitudes and beliefs encourage the donors to save other’s people lives. From the following statistical graph, the picture of Australian donor will be clearer

Purpose and Scope of the Research Study

Figure 2: Organ Donation Global Comparison

(Source: Razdan et al. 2015, pp-100)

Through this research, the researcher will mainly concentrate on the factors that are influencing or discouraging young people from staying apart from organ donation activities. From the global comparison of organ donation, it is found out that Australia holds 22^nd rank from this organ donation perspective (Forsberg et al. 2014). As this organ transplantation can save millions of people's lives who are suffering from acute diseases, the Australian government should also think about it and should take the initiatives to encourage the young people to donate their organs.  The researcher will collect data from other surveys so that research findings will be more helpful to analyze the entire topic in a detailed manner.

4.1 Research Design

Two types of research approaches are taken; one is the inductive approach, and the other is the deductive approach. Huang et al. (2014) stated that sequential approach with the proper selection of research design helps to obtain accurate results from this research study. Inductive approach is used to identify new concepts or theories from the research topic. On the other hand, the deductive approach is helpful to analyze the existing theories of the research topic in details. The entire research work will be conducted through the deductive approach which will help to analyze and test the theory behind organ donation plan. With this deductive approach, the researcher will also select the descriptive design to evaluate the concepts in a detailed manner.

4.2 Intended Population

The researcher selects 1000 people as the intended population of this research proposal. Close ended questionnaire will be distributed amongst the participants to get the feedback about benefits and drawbacks of organ donation activities. 

4.3 Sampling Design

The researcher will use Random probability technique for sampling purpose. With this random probability technique, feedbacks of the participants will be analyzed.

4.4 Research Instrument

Primary and secondary data will be collected from offline resources such as journals, articles, and others and online surveys.

4.5 Data Collection

There are two types of data collection process which can be used to collect useful data and information for the research proposal. Primary data are collected from interview and questionnaire session. On the other hand, secondary data are collected from online articles, journals, and surveys. These collected data will be useful to penetrate inside the topic to extract accurate information from it. 

4.6 Data Analysis

In order to analyze the collected data from primary and secondary sources, two types of data analysis can be used; one in qualitative and other is quantitative (Berntzen and Bjork 2014). Qualitative analysis technique helps to understand the social phenomenon rather than experimental facts. On the other hand, quantitative data analysis technique is helpful to extract useful results from large sets of data. For this research proposal, the researcher uses quantitative data analysis method which will contribute to record the data for a large number of population.

5.1 Models

In order to test the hypothesis in accordance with the research aims and objectives, multiple regression models will be used by the researcher. Young people who donate or not interested in donating their organs are considered as dependent variables. Knowledge, beliefs, norms and attitudes which have positive as well as negative impacts on the young people are considered as independent variables.

Factors Affecting Young Peoples' Involvement in Organ Donation

5.2 Research Implications

After completion of this research work, the researcher will be able to identify the main reasons behind the interest or disinterest amongst Australian people to donate their organs to save others’ lives. 

5.3 Timeline

Based on the research nature, the researcher uses the timeline to divide the entire research work into some useful divisions to provide a standard and systematic form to the research study. Researcher uses gnat chart which helps to complete the entire work in an easy way.

Figure 3: Gnat Chart

(Source: Created By Author)

While conducting this research proposal, the researcher will maintain all the ethical rules and regulations to give a standard form to the entire work. In order to support the research progress, all the references are properly cited. Proper follow up of ethical behaviors will help to solve the problems with fairness and justice. The data which are collected from primary and secondary resources are useful to understand the main theme of the research study in a detailed manner. Commercial applications of the data and information will be avoided by the researcher throughout the research work. The researcher also tries to avoid any internal or external pressure on the participants who will be engaged in this research purpose.  

7. Conclusion

From this research proposal, it can be concluded that lack of knowledge and differences based on the beliefs, attitudes or norms have significant impacts on the Australian adults who are interested or not interested to donate their for their family members or to save other people’s lives. Demands of organ donors are increasing day by day as the organ failure cases exceeded at a significant rate. In this aspect, it becomes very difficult to find out appropriate organ donors due to misconceptions or medical issues. Therefore, the researcher proposes this study to identify the major factors have a significant influence on the people of Australia, especially on the young people. With the selection of proper research design and data analysis technique, the researcher collects the data from primary and secondary sources. The analyzed data is helpful to extract useful information for future studies.  

References

Berntzen, H. and Bjørk, I.T., 2014. Experiences of donor families after consenting to organ donation: A qualitative study. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 30(5), pp.266-274.

Bramstedt, K.A. and Dave, S., 2013. The silence of Good Samaritan kidney donation in Australia: a survey of hospital websites. Clinical transplantation,27(3), pp.E244-E248.

Bramstedt, K.A., 2013. Family refusals of registered consents: the disruption of organ donation by doubleâ€Âstandard surrogate decisionâ€Âmaking. Internal medicine journal, 43(2), pp.120-123.

Clarke, A., Mitchell, A. and Abraham, C., 2014. Understanding donation experiences of unspecified (altruistic) kidney donors. British journal of health psychology, 19(2), pp.393-408.

Forsberg, A., Flodén, A., Lennerling, A., Karlsson, V., Nilsson, M. and Fridh, I., 2014. The core of after death care in relation to organ donation–A grounded theory study. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 30(5), pp.275-282.

Giubilini, A., 2015. Why and how to compensate living organ donors: Ethical implications of the new Australian scheme. Bioethics, 29(4), pp.283-290.

Huang, J.F., Zheng, S.S., Liu, Y.F., Wang, H.B., Chapman, J., O’Connell, P., Millis, M., Fung, J. and Delmonico, F., 2014. China organ donation and transplantation update: the Hangzhou Resolution. Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis Int, 13(2), pp.122-4.

Hyde, M.K. and Chambers, S.K., 2014. Information sources, donation knowledge, and attitudes toward transplant recipients in Australia. Progress in Transplantation, 24(2), pp.169-177.

Hyde, M.K. and White, K.M., 2013. Testing an extended theory of planned behavior to predict young people's intentions to join a bone marrow donor registry. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43(12), pp.2462-2467.

Irving, M.J., Tong, A., Jan, S., Cass, A., Chadban, S., Allen, R.D., Craig, J.C., Wong, G. and Howard, K., 2012. Community attitudes to deceased organ donation: a focus group study. Transplantation, 93(10), pp.1064-1069.

Jelinek, G.A., Marck, C.H., Weiland, T.J., Neate, S.L. and Hickey, B.B., 2012. Organ and tissue donationâ€Ârelated attitudes, education and practices of emergency department clinicians in Australia. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 24(3), pp.244-250.

Marck, C.H., Neate, S.L., Weiland, T.J., Hickey, B.B. and Jelinek, G.A., 2013. Donation after cardiac death: are Australian emergency clinicians supportive?. Internal medicine journal, 43(7), pp.816-819.

Martin, D.E., Nakagawa, T.A., Siebelink, M.J., Bramstedt, K.A., Brierley, J., Dobbels, F., Rodrigue, J.R., Sarwal, M., Shapiro, R., Dominguez-Gil, B. and Danovitch, G., 2015. Pediatric deceased donation—A report of the Transplantation Society Meeting in Geneva. Transplantation, 99(7), pp.1403-1409.

Mercado-Martínez, F.J., Díaz-Medina, B.A. and Hernández-Ibarra, E., 2013. Achievements and barriers in the organ donation process: a critical analysis of donation coordinators' discourse. Progress in Transplantation, 23(3), pp.258-264.

Monforteâ€ÂRoyo, C. and Roqué, M., 2012. The organ donation process: a humanist perspective based on the experience of nursing care. Nursing Philosophy, 13(4), pp.295-301.

Quick, B.L., Morgan, S.E., LaVoie, N.R. and Bosch, D., 2013. Grey’s Anatomy viewing and organ donation attitude formation: Examining mediators bridging this relationship among African Americans, Caucasians, and Latinos. Communication Research, p.0093650213475476.

Radunz1ABCDE, S., Juntermanns1BDE, B., Heuer1BDF, M., Frühauf2ABD, N.R., Paul1ACD, A. and Kaiser1ABCDF, G.M., 2012. The effect of education on the attitude of medical students towards organ donation. Ann Transplant,17(1), pp.140-144.

Razdan, M., Degenholtz, H.B., Kahn, J.M. and Driessen, J., 2015. Breakdown in the Organ Donation Process and Its Effect on Organ Availability. Journal of transplantation, 2015.

Reese, P.P., Boudville, N. and Garg, A.X., 2015. Living kidney donation: outcomes, ethics, and uncertainty. The Lancet, 385(9981), pp.2003-2013.

Sampson, B.G., O'Callaghan, G.P. and Russ, G.R., 2013. Is donation after cardiac death reducing the brain-dead donor pool in Australia?. Critical Care and Resuscitation, 15(1), p.21.

Sheth, K.N., Nutter, T., Stein, D.M., Scalea, T.M. and Bernat, J.L., 2012. Autoresuscitation after asystole in patients being considered for organ donation. Critical care medicine, 40(1), pp.158-161.

Siegel, J.T., Navarro, M.A., Tan, C.N. and Hyde, M.K., 2014. Attitude–behavior consistency, the principle of compatibility, and organ donation: A classic innovation. Health Psychology, 33(9), p.1084.

Stenner, P. and Moreno-Gabriel, E., 2013. Liminality and affectivity: The case of deceased organ donation. Subjectivity, 6(3), pp.229-253.

Tong, A., Chapman, J.R., Wong, G., Josephson, M.A. and Craig, J.C., 2013. Public awareness and attitudes to living organ donation: systematic review and integrative synthesis. Transplantation, 96(5), pp.429-437.