Importance of In-Hospital Donor Coordinators for Improving the Situation of Organ Shortage in Japan

-From the Results of a Comparative Survey Between Europe and Japan-

Abstract

Deceased donor liver transplantation is considered to be one of the important treatment options for acute liver failure. Thus, Japan needs to implement various imperative measures to increase the rate of organ donation. Although it is believed that the most critical factor for the organ shortage is the lack of a well-established in-hospital system to convert potential donors into actual donors, no previous studies have attempted to analyze the problem from the perspective of the intrinsic motivation level of in-hospital coordinators. Thus, we conducted a questionnaire survey in Europe and Japan to identify the characteristics of in-hospital coordinators who play crucial roles in organ donation. We compared the job satisfaction levels, job core dimensions based on the Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model, and job responsibilities between European and Japanese coordinators. Our results demonstrated that the European coordinators had higher skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback in relation to their job characteristics, which led to higher job satisfaction and higher job performance than that of their Japanese counterparts. This finding implies that these coordinators in Japan need to be stimulated to improve the process of motivating potential donors to become actual donors. We suggest that redesigning of the job responsibilities of organ donor coordinators in Japan would increase the organ donation rate in Japan.