Many people are in desperate need of an organ transplant to save their lives or to improve their health. In fact, almost 7,700 people are on the UK organ-transplant waiting list right now. Although an average of nine people get an organ transplant every day, many more never get the phone call to say the organ they need has been found. Thousands of people die while still waiting.
Most of us don’t like to think about what would happen to us or to our loved ones if we died or were in a near-death situation. Organ donation does cause some people unnecessary fears, like the idea that if you agree to donate your organs doctors will not work as hard to save your life. This is a common concern about organ transplantation, and one that may be particularly strong in certain ethnic groups, but it’s simply not valid.
First of all, when you go to the hospital for a life-saving treatment, your doctor’s highest priority is to keep you alive. You will be seen by the doctor who has the best skills to treat your medical problem (and this is unlikely to be the organ-transplant doctor). Second, doctors usually have no idea whether you have agreed to be an organ donor until you have actually died! Neither of us has ever witnessed a doctor ask about organ donation until there was absolutely nothing left to do clinically. The doctors wait until you are dead to decide about organ donation. In fact, if you have agreed to be an organ donor, you will probably have even more tests done to determine that you are officially dead than someone who is not donating an organ.
Perhaps the most convincing argument that being an organ donor will not affect your medical care is that medical doctors are more likely than the general public to make themselves organ donors. In fact, studies suggest that the more education a doctor has had, the more likely he or she is to be an organ donor. Healthcare professionals who know a great deal about organ donation are more likely to be organ donors themselves and to recommend organ donation to their relatives. Now, if the doctors who know the most about what happens during organ transplantation are also the most likely people to sign up to do it themselves, don’t you think that they are reasonably confident that being listed as an organ donor will not hurt the quality of their medical care? Doctors do not always get things right, but if they have made this choice for themselves, then it’s a good bet that you can feel comfortable making this choice as well. More importantly, you might even be able to save the life of one of the 7,700 people on that long waiting list.