Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice

End of life care: Organ donation

  1. 81. If a patient is close to death and their views cannot be determined, you should be prepared to explore with those close to them whether they had expressed any views about organ or tissue donation, if donation is likely to be a possibility.xiii
  2. 82. You should follow any national procedures for identifying potential organ donors and, in appropriate cases, for notifying the local transplant coordinator.xiv You must take account of the requirements in relevant legislationxv and in any supporting codes of practicexvi, in any discussions that you have with the patient or those close to them. You should make clear that any decision about whether the patient would be a suitable candidate for donation would be made by the transplant coordinator or team, and not by you and the team providing treatment.

References

xiii Patients may have recorded their wishes about organ or tissue donation in the NHS Organ Donor Register held by NHS Blood and Transplant. Guidance on the issues that may be of concern to families can be found in publications such as Donor Family Care Policy (2004) and Organ donation and religious perspectives (2010) by NHS Blood and Transplant.

xiv See publications on Donor Family Care Policy (2004) and Organ donation and religious perspectives (2010), and other guides from NHS Blood and Transplant

xv See the Human Tissue Act 2004 and Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006.

xvi Human Tissue Authority Code of Practice 1: Consent (2009), Code of Practice 2: Donation of solid organs for transplantation (2009).

Download the guidance