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323.6: Support tools to help families cope with organ donation processes: A scoping review.

2025· article· en· W4416839438 on OpenAlexaffabout
Ken Lotherington, Stephanie Sutherland, Myra Lamont, Aimee Sarti

Bibliographic record

VenueTransplantation · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicOrgan Donation and Transplantation
Canadian institutionsOttawa HospitalCanadian Blood Services
Fundersnot available
KeywordsOrgan donationMEDLINEDonationSocial supportQualitative research

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Introduction: Deceased organ donation is an extremely rare event. In the majority of cases donation requires someone to; 1) have suffered a traumatic brain injury (Girlanda, 2016), 2) be ventilated in an intensive care unit (Soria-Oliver et al., 2020) and, 3) be determined to be neurological brain dead (Shemie et al., 2014). Alternatively, when care is futile, a decision to withdraw life sustaining measures can initiate organ donation (Healey et al., 2020). Those supporting loved ones who suffer medical tragedy are faced with many decisions regarding patient care and when death is determined or care futile, they may be asked to consider organ donation. In 2022, a national qualitative study family donor experiences with the donation process in intensive care units (Sarti et al., 2023), the study revealed that donor families often feel abandoned, lack social support, and receive insufficient support. As a result, this current study aims to assess the literature by undertaking a scoping review to search for evidence-based family support tools. Method: We used a scoping review using the Joanna Briggs Institute framework. With the help of a professional librarian, we searched the published literature (Ovid, MEDLINE, and PsychINFO). The search was conducted on March 24, 2024, and updated on April 10, 2024. Articles that met inclusion criteria included evidence-based peer review articles that contained or discussed family support tools used both in hospital and post hospital organ donation processes. We purposefully defined family support tools widely in an attempt to capture the breadth of existing tools (e.g., support groups, brochures, education, videos, care bundles). The first and second author screened the references, extracted and analyzed the publications. Results: Fourteen references were included in this review, all studies were written in English (n=14), and came from a variety of countries including the United States (n=4), Israel (n=2), Australia (n=2), Belgium (n=1), Brazil (n=1), Hungary (n=1), Iran (n=1), France (n=1), United Kingdom (n=1). The support tools identified were grouped into the following three thematic areas: support programs, family member assessment (grief and family experience), and clinical tools. Conclusion: There is a limited number of academic studies focused on family support tools for use during and after the organ donation process. We are in the process of building a collaborative team across Canada including representatives from organ donation organizations, transplant societies, family members, and donation researchers to develop a suite of tools to be used by healthcare professionals with families as they journey through the organ donation process.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.015
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.045
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.020
Threshold uncertainty score0.080

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0150.045
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.005
Bibliometrics0.0200.016
Science and technology studies0.0020.001
Scholarly communication0.0050.005
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0050.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0110.002

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.018
GPT teacher head0.318
Teacher spread0.300 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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