Assessment of Knowledge and Practices of Nursing Personnel While Caring of Brain Dead Patients Potential for Organ Donation

Introduction Organ donation and transplantation is a life-saving procedure for patients with end-stage organ failure, but it depends on the availability of donor organs. Nurses play a major role to provide care to brain-dead patient potential for organ donation and efficient care to increase the organ’s survival. For years many efforts have been made to create awareness in public regarding organ donation but donors are still very less than demand. Most of the recipients are waiting for organs for more than 6–8 years and many died because of the paucity of donors. Hence, knowledge of nursing personnel is extremely important to the success of organ donation. Objective To assess the knowledge and practices of nursing personnel while caring of brain-dead patients potential for organ donation. Methodology A descriptive research design was adopted to carry out the study. The study was conducted among 30 nursing personnel caring for brain-dead patients from the automatic tube compensation ICU and various units of Nehru Hospital, PGIMER, Chandigarh. Nurses were given questionnaires to fill, including a sociodemographic data sheet and a knowledge questionnaire. The practices of caring for brain-dead patients were observed by using an observation checklist, and a total of 30 observations were made. Results The findings of the study revealed that 50% of nursing personnel had good knowledge about the care of brain-dead patients, 32% had average knowledge, whereas 18% had poor knowledge. There were 42 steps/items of practice regarding care of a brain dead patient. Around one third (38%) of the steps were followed by the participants, some of them followed 57% of the steps. Conclusion Only half of the nursing personnel were possessing good knowledge about the care of brain-dead patients and less than half were doing good practices about the care of brain-dead patients; hence, there is a need to educate the nursing personnel regarding caring of brain-dead patients.