Social aspects of the organ donation in Slovenia, 2017

Centre for Social Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana in cooperation with several organizations, researched the social aspects of organ and tissue donation in Slovenia. On the online panel population of Valicon company authors conducted a pilot survey with the purpose of testing the questionnaire. The data was collected within the framework of the survey Slovenian Public Opinion 2017/1: European Values Study. 1076 adult residents of Slovenia participated in the field survey. The questions include the following topics: informing about organ donation after death, willingness to donate organs (own, close ones), registration in the register of organ donors, conversation about organ donation, attitudes related to organ donation, opinions about the attitudes of others towards organ donation, familiarity with organ donation. Objective of the research: transplantation as a form of medical treatment made a substantial progress, both in terms of patient survival after transplantation, and in terms of new transplantation methods, which results in greater unbalance between organs available for procurement and the number of people waiting for transplantation. In Slovenia, in general attitudes towards organ donation are rather positive (more than half of Slovenes agree), yet behaviour does not appear to have followed such positive attitudes (only 0.22% of the Slovenian population has registered as a potential organ donor). With the research "Social aspects of the organ donation in Slovenia: Analysis of the stimulating and inhibitory factors for designing programs to achieve behavioural change" the authors tried to find ways to narrow the gap between organ demand and supply under the precondition that organ transplantation remains totally voluntary, depending on the willingness of people to donate their organs or the organs of their loved ones after death to others who need them. The authors also prepared recommendations for programs designed to achieve behavioural change in the Slovenian population.