Organ Donation Ethical Dilemmas

Organ donation, and the ethical issues surrounding it, has become a topic of discussion in recent years. Most ethical issues involve patients and family, but it can also affect nurses and physicians. The article Organ Donation after Circulatory Death, the authors highlight the ethical dilemmas of organ donation due to “non-heart beating” death. In such cases the patient must die within 60 minutes after being removed from life support to be eligible for organ donation. With the shortage of organs available for donation, the criteria to consider a body for donation has changed from “brain death” to “circulatory death”, making organs available sooner. This change in practice has caused ethical dilemmas among the healthcare environment. In a “2006 study found that some perioperative nurses did not accept the irreversibility of cardiac death” (37). A nurse is trained to save lives, and this practice goes against that notion. A nurse must set aside her own personal views and help the family exercise their right to the choices that they …show more content…
Certain cultural groups, such as some Orthodox Jews and Shintos have strong aversions to tampering with dead bodies. This is a challenge for the healthcare professionals as this may hinder the care of the patient. According to the 2010 survey by Fugate mentioned in the article Organ Donation after Circulatory Death (2011), there is a wide discrepancy between hospital on criteria for DCD and nearly half do not have a clear definition of what determines circulatory death (36). In Sharon’s case the time frame was sixty minutes with irreversible cardiopulmonary cessation for five minutes, however another hospital may be for ninety minutes with death occurring after a two minute cessation mark. There needs to be a further investigation to determine a standard definition of DCD criteria that can be used by all