Public Information on Kidney Donation

Public Information on Kidney Donation

The issue of organ donation is rife with bureaucratic difficulties. The significant deficit between that which is needed and that which is available to the medical community has created a highly deficient 'waiting list' system, in which would be recipients are in a slow race against pressing health ailments that require timely organ transplant. This is the imperative driving a need for the more aggressive courtship of live kidney donation, which due to its feasibility for the living donor and its significantly better results for the patient, is the preferred method of treatment for those with critical renal issues.

Research tends to endorse the need identified here by indicating that a significant portion of late-stage renal failure cases absolutely require kidney transplant as a life-saving measure. As MNT (2008) reports, "38% of all kidney transplants in the U.S. are now performed using living donors." (MNT, 1) This is an important point to draw upon as we enter into a broader discussion concerning the courtship of donors. The dissemination of information which is required to encourage more live kidney donation is rife with ethical concerns, particularly over the implications surrounding financial compensation for kidney donation, which threatens to prey on the critical monetary needs of the poor to improve the health of those wealthy enough to pay.

Means of Dissemination:

Though deeply controversial, one of the most effective ways to encourage live kidney donation is through an evaluation of the provision of certain donor incentives. In terms of disseminating information, the attachment of a public health campaign to indications of certain donor incentives will be distinctly effective in generating attention from the right parties. This is underscored in a study by Kranenburg et al. (2008), which recognized that this is an approach which may be received poorly by a public with practical and ethical apprehension about just such a system. The study endeavors therefore to determine the level of public acceptance for different measures of compensation to donors.

Particularly, it measures public opinion concerning two scenarios: one in which the kidney donor is given a fixed financial compensation; and one in which the donor is provided with health insurance coverage for life. According to the findings of the study, "although almost half of the respondents (46%) were reluctant towards introducing a system with fixed compensation to increase the number of living kidney donors, still 25% of the general public reacted positively." (Kranenburg, 1039) Moreover, the response was reported as significantly more favorable in contexts where health insurance for life would be offered, suggesting the respondents viewed this approach with less ethical apprehension. But even where ethical apprehension was found more likely, with the offering of financial compensation in exchange for kidney donation, respondents demonstrated a significant enough degree of support to suggest that the public will may exist to allow such an approach.

Without remarking here upon the legal intricacies of such an approach, the findings in the article by Kranenburg et al. provide our discussion with a basis to contend that some measure of the public would be reachable through either of the methods measured. Particularly compelling is the finding that 5.5% of respondents actually expressed a 'great interest' in partaking in a donor program that would compensate them with healthcare coverage for life. This offers an impetus to disseminate nursing research findings through health insurance companies and medical facilities with a vested interest in matching donors and recipients. This study underscores the presumption that where public health information campaigns are concerned, information is often accessed but forgotten or ignored. By connecting this information to certain compensatory incentives, those who make up a likely donor population may be more likely to retain and return to the information provided. Though controversial, this does present a realistic view on the motives that might incline one toward an act with significant personal and health-related implications.

It is important for public health facilities to consider the courtship of donations in this way, primarily because a failure to do so is increasingly stimulating an extra-curricular market for the sale of kidneys. In other words, by neglecting to consider the option of connecting kidney donation courtship to such compensatory incentives, the medical community is not protecting against the ethical concerns correlated thereto. They are simply forcing would-be recipients to look outside of the field for options that might keep them alive. The research provided by MNT indicates as much, and simultaneously illuminates a non-traditional approach to organ-donation courtship that should be exploited. According to its research, "if one accepts that, as the waiting list grows, more and more patients will consider the public solicitation of living donors via websites like the one we reviewed, it is imperative that the transplant community begin to ask - and answer - some key questions, says James R. Rodrigue, co-author of the study." (MNT, 1)

Quite to the point, the medical community must in a sense find a way to compete with the relative efficiency of this system, especially because potential kidney donors are scarce in supply to begin with. The tendency of users to exit the health system and become donors on independent terms threatens only to further undermine the effectiveness of the already critically ineffective 'waiting list' structure. Therefore, the internet should be viewed as a way to pair donors and recipients, but as mediated by the health system. In other words, such informational websites should be used to court donors by offering information on 'waiting list' cases within their facilities.