Organ donation: A study of its representations among organ procurement coordinators and their staff

Journal title PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE
Author/s Silvia Monaco, Francesca Greco, Barbara Cordella, Michela Di Trani
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2021/3 Language English
Pages 18 P. 125-142 File size 260 KB
DOI 10.3280/PDS2021-003014
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Making the life-saving treatment of transplantation available to patients who need it re-quires the cooperation of individuals and families who decide to donate organs. Healthcare workers navigate organizational, bureaucratic and relational aspects of this process, including cases in which a deceased individual has not specified a wish about organ donation and their surviving family members must be asked for consent to donate during a delicate phase of mourning. This research aims to understand the experience of these health workers regarding their work. We collected 18 interviews from organ donation healthcare workers in five of the major hospitals in Rome. The transcripts underwent a multivariate text analysis to identify the repre-sentations of organ donation and the symbolic categories organizing the practice of these workers. This research elucidated a symbolic space constructed of four factors: the "Context", in-volving family and health workers; the "Work purposes", including the procedures and the relationships; the "Transplant", which involves omnipotence and limits; the "Donation", which involves ideals versus reality. The characterizing elements of these representations, belonging to organ donation work-ers, are the prestige, the certification of brain death, the communication, the transplant, and the salvation. In the lives of these workers, to be a "bridge between life and death2 evokes feelings of prestige rather than difficult feelings associated with confronting one’s limitations. These aspects concern the difficulties met by the health staff in their work, and they are useful ele-ments to design a focused training and support program for organ donor workers.

Keywords: organ donation, organ procurement coordinators, Emotional Text Mining, text analysis

  1. Anker A.E., Akey J.E. and Feeley T.H. (2013). Providing social support in a persuasive context: forms of social support reported by organ procurement coordinators. Journal of Health Communication, 28(8): 835-845. DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2012.72846
  2. Anker A.E. and Feeley T.H. (2011a). Difficult communication: compliance-gaining strategies of organ procurement coordinators. Journal of Health Communication, 16(4): 372-392. DOI: 10.1080/10810730.2010.53511
  3. Anker A.E. and Feeley T.H. (2011b). Asking the difficult questions: message strategies used by organ procurement coordinators in requesting familial consent to organ donation. Journal of Health Communication, 16(6): 643-659. DOI: 10.1080/10810730.2011.55199
  4. Billeter A.T., Sklare S., Franklin G.A., Wright J., Morgan G., O’Flynn P.E. and Polk H.C. (2012). Sequential improvements in organ procurement increase the organ donation rate, Injury Journal, 43 (11): 1805-1810.
  5. Blumenthal P.A. (2007). “It’s not a job; it’s a lifestyle”: the experience of being a donation coordinator. Progress in Transplantation, 17 (1): 8-22. DOI: 10.1177/15269248070170010
  6. Boerner K., Burack O.R., Jopp D.S. and Mock S.E. (2015). Grief after patient death: direct care staff in nursing homes and homecare, Journal of pain symptom management, 49 (2): 214-222.
  7. Bolasco S. (2013). L’analisi automatica dei testi: fare ricerca con il text mining [The authomatic analysis for texts: working with text mining]. Roma: Carocci Editore.
  8. Braibanti P. (2008). Psicologia della salute nei contesti di cura [Health Psychology in care contexts]. -- Retrived from: https://www.academia.edu/9649386/Psicologia_della_salute_ nei_contesti_di_cura.
  9. Brody L. R. (1985). Gender differences in emotional development: A review of theories and research. Journal of Personality, 53(2): 102–149.
  10. Carli R. (1990). Il processo di collusione nelle rappresentazioni sociali. Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, 4: 282-296.
  11. Centro Nazionale Trapianti (2020). Attività di donazione & trapianto di organi, tessuti e cellule staminali emopoietiche. Report 2019. Retrived from: -- http://www.trapianti.salute. gov.it/imgs/C_17_cntPubblicazioni_351_allegato.pdf
  12. Corbetta P. (1999) Metodologia e tecniche della ricerca sociale [Methodology and techniques for social research]. Bologna: il Mulino.
  13. Cordella B., Greco F. and Raso A. (2014). Lavorare con Corpus di Piccole Dimensioni in Psicologia Clinica: Una Proposta per la Preparazione e l’Analisi dei Dati [Working with a small corpus in clinical psychology: a proposal for preparation and data analysis]. In Née E., Daube M., Valette M. and Fleury S. Actes JADT 2014. 12es Journées internationales d’Analyse Statistque des Données Textuelles, Paris, France, Juin 3-6 2014. Lexicometrica, pp. 173-184. -- Retrieved from: http://lexicometrica.univ-paris3.fr/jadt/jadt2014/ 01-ACTES/14-JADT2014.pdf
  14. Costa A.N., Lombardini L., Storani D. and CNT Working Group. (2019). Organ Procurement and Transplantation in Italy. Transplantation, 103 (6): 1065-1069. DOI: 10.1097/TP.000000000000257
  15. DuBois J.M. and Anderson E.E. (2006). Attitudes toward death criteria and organ donation among healthcare personnel and the general public. Progress in Transplantation, 16 (1): 65-73.
  16. Fornari F. (1976). Simbolo e codice: Dal processo psicoanalitico all’analisi istituzionale [Simbol and code: from the psychanalytical process to the istitutional analysis]. Milano: Feltrinelli.
  17. Greco F. (2016). Integrare la disabilità: Una metodologia interdisciplinare per leggere il cambiamento culturale. [Integrating the disability: an interdisciplinary methodology to read the cultural change]. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  18. Iapichino G., Piccolo G., Bonelli S., Pizzi C., Giannelli Castiglione A., Gravame V., Guarino A., Licata C., Sarpellon M., Servadio G. et al. (1993). The organizational problems of the hospitals of the Nord Italian Transplant Program NITp engaged in the acrivities of organ retrieval dor transplantation. The Collaborative Group of Resuscitation Anesthetists. Minerva Anestesiologica, 59 (6): 327-334.
  19. Kress J., Smith D.L., Fehling P.C. and Gordon E.J. (2009). Improving the recruitment and retention of organ procurement coordinators: a survey study. American Journal of Transplantation, 9 (6): 1451-1459.
  20. Kruijver I.P., Kerkstra A., Bensing J.M. and Van de Wiel H.B. (2001). Communication skills of nurses during interactions with simulated cancer patients. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34 (6): 772-779.
  21. Lebart L., Salem A. and Berry L. (1998). Exploring textual data. Vol. 4. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
  22. Long T., Psychol C., Sque M. and Addington-Hall J. (2008). What Does a Diagnosis of Brain Death Mean to Family Members Approached about Organ Donation? A Review of the Literature. Progress in Transplantation, 18 (2): 118-126. DOI: 10.1177/15269248080180020
  23. Manyalich M., Cabrer C., Valero R., Paredes D., Navarro A., Trias E., Vilarrodona A., Ruiz A., Rodriguez C. and Paez G. (2003). Transplant procurement management: a model for organ and tissue shortage. Transplantation Proceedings, 35 (7): 2533-2538.
  24. Manyalich M., Cabrer C., Paredes D., Navarro A., de Cabo F. and Trias E. (2000). L’organizzazione della donazione d’organi e il ruolo dei coordinatori [The organization of organ donation and the role of the coordinators]. In Procaccio F., Ghirardini A., Costa A. N., Ridolfi L., Petrini F., Martinelli G., Parades D., Cabrer C., Manyalich M. (a cura di), Manuale del corso nazionale per coordinatori alla donazione e prelievo di organi [Manual of the national course for organ donation and procurement coordinators]. Bologna: Editrice Compositori.
  25. Mao P., Cai P., Luo A., Huang P. and Whenzhao X. (2018). Burnout and related factors in organ donation coordinators: a cross-sectional study in China, Annals of Transplantation, 23: 647-653. DOI: 10.12659/AOT.91040
  26. Matte Blanco I. (1981). L’inconscio come insiemi infiniti [The unconscious as infinite sets]. Torino: Einaudi.
  27. Moscovici S. (2005). Le rappresentazioni sociali [Social representations]. Bologna: il Mulino.
  28. Nord Italian Transplant Program (NITp) -- website. https://www.policlinico.mi.it/AMM/nitp/ area_paziente/nitp/chi_siamo.html [accessed to 23/02/2021]
  29. Pelagalli F., Greco F. and De Santis E. (2017). Social emotional data analysis. The map of Europe. In Petrucci A. and Verde R., SIS 2017, Statistics and Data Science: new challenges, new generations. Proceedings of the Conference of the Italian Statistical Society, Florence 28-30 June 2017. Firenze: Firenze University Press, pp. 779-784.
  30. Pelletier-Hibbert M. (1998). Coping stategies used by nurses to deal with the care of organ donors and their families. Heart & Lung, 27 (4): 230-237.
  31. Potenza R., Fonsato A., Bertolino D., Peluso M., Maina L., Finiguerra I. and Vergano M. (2013). Hospital health professionals’ education about organ and tissue donation: a Turin hospital experience. Transplantations Proceedings, 45 (7): 2587-2590.
  32. Pugliese M., Degli Espositi D., Venturoli N., Mazzetti Gaito P., Dormi A., Ghirardini A., Costa A.N. and Ridolfi L. (2001). Hospital attitude survey on organ donation in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy. Transplant International, 14 (6): 411-419.
  33. Salim A., Berry C., Ley E.J., Schulman D., Desai C., Navarro S. and Malinoski D (2011). In-house coordinator programs improve conversion rates for organ donation. Journal of Trauma, 71 (3): 733-736.
  34. Salton G. (1989). Automatic text processing: the transformation, analysis, and retrieval of Information by Computer, Massachussets: Addison-Wesley . ISBN: 978-0-201-12227-5.
  35. Salvatore S. and Freda M.F. (2011). Affect, unconscious and sensemaking: A psychodynamic. semiotic and dialogic model. New Ideas in Psychology, 29 (2): 119-135.
  36. Savaresi S.M. and Boley D. L. (2004). A comparative analysis on the bisecting k-means and the PDDP clustering algorithms. Intelligent Data Analysis, 8 (4): 345-362. DOI: 10.3233/IDA-2004-8403
  37. Siminoff L.A. and Chillag K. (1999). The fallacy of the “gift of life”. Hastings Centeter Report, 29 (6): 34-41. DOI: 10.2307/352787
  38. Sistema Informativo Trapianti, Waiting List for transplant. -- Retrived from: https://trapianti. sanita.it/statistiche/liste_attesa_1.aspx [accessed on 15/12/2020]
  39. Steinbach M., Karypis G. and Kumar V. (2000). A Comparison of Document Clustering Techniques. In KDD 2000 Workshop on Text Mining. Boston (USA) 20-23 August 2000. -- Retrieved from: http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/node/157

  • Self-care in children and young people with complex chronic conditions: a qualitative study using Emotional Text Mining Giuseppina Spitaletta, Valentina Biagioli, Francesca Greco, Rachele Mascolo, Annachiara Liburdi, Giulia Manzi, Orsola Gawronski, Riccardo Ricci, Emanuela Tiozzo, Ercole Vellone, Teresa Grimaldi Capitello, Michele Salata, Massimiliano Raponi, Immacolata Dall’Oglio, in Frontiers in Pediatrics 1170268/2023
    DOI: 10.3389/fped.2023.1170268
  • Using Emotional Text Mining to Explore the Cultural Representation of Organ Donation in Spanish and Italian Culture Silvia Monaco, Anna Cortellino, Maria Giovanna Massari, Michela Di Trani, Francesca Greco, in Culture & Psychology /2023 pp.1354067X2311729
    DOI: 10.1177/1354067X231172909
  • The Relationship between Physiotherapist and Patient: A Qualitative Study on Physiotherapists’ Representations on This Theme Silvia Monaco, Alessia Renzi, Beatrice Galluzzi, Rachele Mariani, Michela Di Trani, in Healthcare /2022 pp.2123
    DOI: 10.3390/healthcare10112123
  • The cultural representations and symbolizations emerging from Italian psychologists working in multidisciplinary assisted reproduction teams: A linguistic analysis with the emotional text mining Michela Di Trani, Roberta Spoletini, Alessia Renzi, Silvia Monaco, Fabiola Fedele, Giulia Scaravelli, in Journal of Health Psychology 13591053241251528/2024
    DOI: 10.1177/13591053241251528

Silvia Monaco, Francesca Greco, Barbara Cordella, Michela Di Trani, Organ donation: A study of its representations among organ procurement coordinators and their staff in "PSICOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE" 3/2021, pp 125-142, DOI: 10.3280/PDS2021-003014