![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
Living kidney donation is an alternative treatment option for end-stage renal failure. Prospective donors are protected from risk by counselling and assessment processes, to ensure they are fully informed about all the stages of donation. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 living kidney donors from across New Zealand, this article discusses donors’ experience of the pre-donation screening process, donation workup coordination, psychological preparation, and post-operative follow-up care and support. In particular, the article examines donor perceptions of the informed consent process. The findings indicate that donors’ experience of the consent process may be at odds with the New Zealand Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights 1996. Instead of a primary healthcare focus on the threshold elements of informed consent, this study indicates that more effort should be made to adequately inform donors and to clearly spell out each stage of the donation process to better meet donors’ needs.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the research participants involved in this study.
Notes
1 Unlike the Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights, endorsed in 2008, New Zealand's Code of Rights is enshrined in legislation (Manning & Paterson, Citation2009, p. 216).
2 ODNZ Annual Report, p. 11. See http://www.donor.co.nz/files/odnz_2010_annual_report.pdf (accessed 28 January 2013).
3 Documentation of transplant recipients’ experiences is discussed in Shaw (Citation2012).
4 In addition to widespread public awareness of the Cartwright Inquiry due to television coverage of the testimony, the Code is required to be displayed on the walls of hospitals and health centres throughout New Zealand.