The role of understanding the brain death concept in individuals’ willingness to donate organs – preliminary study

Purpose: The study tries to explore if there is an association between the level of understanding the brain death concept and the willingness to organ donation. Methods: For the purpose of that study the two-step method was introduced. The first stage was planned to test people’s ideas about brain death and then separate main groups of responses from these ideas. Those general categories were used in the second phase of the study. 550 respondents completed self-administered questionnaire comprised three sections: (1) understanding the term brain death scale; (2) willingness to donate scale; and (3) general demographic questions. Results: It turned out that just over 50% of respondents correctly associated the death of the human brain with the patient’s death. The rest of the subjects was convinced that the diagnosis of brain death means that the organism had a chance to survive. Significant association between the participants’ willingness to donate their organs after death and their understanding of the concept of brain death was found. Conclusions: The results supported the prediction that having a thorough knowledge of the concept of brain death is associated with a greater willingness to become an organ donor after one’s death. Our findings show how important providing professional education on transplantation in our society is.