Amina Silva’s bio
Amina Silva is a registered nurse and is in the last year of her PhD at Queen’s University. Her clinical background is focused on end-of-life care, kidney transplantation and eye donation processes. Her research program is focused on organ donation processes, end-of-life and survivorship care and simulation-based educational strategies. Amina is also a research coordinator for the BRiC program (Studying Burnout and Compassion Fatigue among OTDCs in Canada), a research assistant at Queen’s University, and a simulation facilitator at University of Ottawa.
Organ Donation Following Medical Assistance in Dying: A Scoping Review
Vanessa Silva e Silva, Andrea Rochon, Ken Lotherington, Laura Hornby, Tineke Wind, Jan Bollen, Lindsay Wilson, Aimee Sarti, Sonny Dhanani
Background: Organ donation following Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is a relatively new procedure when compared with the practices of deceased organ donation in general, and this dual procedure is currently performed in Canada, Netherlands, Belgium and mostly recent Spain. To inform changes in the practice guidelines and ensure ethically acceptable procedures, we examined the international literature on the existing processes, outcomes and ethical debates regarding organ donation following MAiD.
Methods: Scoping review using the JBI framework. Published literature was searched on Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, CINAHL via EBSCOhost, Ovid PsycINFO, Web of Science – Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index via Clarivate, and Academic Search Complete via EBSCOhost. Gray and unpublished literature included materials from organ donation organizations. Reports were considered if they discussed organ donation following MAiD at home or in any healthcare setting in any country. Reports were screened, and data extracted and analyzed by two independent reviewers.
Results: The searching process yield 1879 reports and 121 were included in this review. Most reports were in English (n=95), from Canada (n=51), and published between 2019-2021 (n=57). Results from this review identified the following major theme areas: the main processes and procedures involved in organ donation after MAiD in the hospital and at home; the main clinical pathways involved in different settings; ethical dilemmas involved in this combined procedure; healthcare professionals’ roles and perceptions; impacts on the organ donation system; transplant outcomes; public perceptions; safety processes and tools in place; educational strategies for healthcare professionals involved; and suggestions for future research to address knowledge gaps.
Conclusion: Results from this review can also be used as a rich source of information for countries with organ donation following MAiD and provide important directions for improvements in the current organ donation and transplantation system using MAiD donors.