Organ and Tissue Donation : An Evidence Base for Practice

• What is the historical and social context that shapes our attitudes towards organ and tissue donation?
• How do the bereavement experiences of organ donor families differ from other types of bereavement?
• How can health and social care professionals support bereaved families leading up to, during and after organ and tissue donation?

This ground-breaking book is a valuable addition to the end-of-life, palliative and bereavement care literature. Using original research findings relating to the social and psychological issues surrounding organ donation, this book provides a strong evidence-base and brings together contemporary research carried out in the developed world. The book is internationally applicable, especially in countries with Westernised healthcare systems and where organ donation takes place using similar practices to the UK.

Key areas covered include:

• Examination of the historical development of human dissection and how it created a context for legislation
• Analysis of how human organ and tissue donation is currently understood
• The social theories that help explain the donation event and families’ and health professionals’ experiences of it

Organ and Tissue Donation: An Evidence Base for Practice is essential reading for transplant coordinators and qualified clinical practitioners working in intensive care, accident and emergency departments, operating theatres, palliative care units and bereavement support and counselling services. It is also a core text for specialist postgraduate programmes and a useful reference book for national organisations concerned with donation and transplant services.

Dr. Magi Sque studied nursing at Guy’s Hospital, London. Specialising in oncological nursing, she worked clinically for 17 years in UK and Canada. Supported by a British Department of Health Nursing Research Studentship she completed a PhD at the University of Southampton in 1996. This work explored the organ donation experiences of family members and the attitudes, knowledge and organ donation behavior of UK Registered nurses. She was a lecturer, for four years, at the European Institute of Health & Medical Sciences, the University of Surrey prior to joining the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southampton as a Senior Lecturer in 2001. Her research is focused on issues that concern bereavement, organ donation, retention and transplantation, social constructions and concepts of the dying and dead body, the role of relatives and significant others in illness (particularly terminal illness trajectories), and the nature and quality of support given to them.

Professor Sheila Payne is the UK's first professor of Hospice Studies, at Lancaster University. Sheila specialises in bereavement and palliative care in cancer and chronic illness. A nurse and health psychologist she worked clinically before going into academia 20 years ago. She has been researching into palliative care since the early 1990's and been involved in developing a number of British national research organizations and groups in the UK. She is also a trustee of St Luke's Hospice in Sheffield.