THE ODEQUS PROJECT
ODEQUS - Organ Donation European Quality System
There are wide differences in the effectiveness of donation programs among the European countries. The national donation rates may range, for example, from 1.5 deceased donors pmp* in Bulgaria to 34.4 deceased donors pmp in Spain. Kidney living donation rates vary from 1.2 pmp in Poland to 25.3 pmp in the Netherlands (data from 2009).
Such data reveal that the possibilities of European citizens getting an organ graft differ notably, depending on where they live. These differences can be partly explained by the type of donation programs implemented, but other issues such as the structure of their donation services, their efficiency and social factors have a big impact.
For this reason, the ODEQUS Project (Organ Donation European Quality System) aims at creating useful evaluation tools meant to increase the efficiency of organ donation in all European countries.
According to an analysis of the the best practices in organ donation, such tools are going to be designed and included in a Quality System. They should help to increase the number of citizens attended by the European donation programs, despite economic, legal or cultural differences.
ODEQUS Project involves 12 associated partners and 5 collaborating partners and it is co-financed by the European Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC 20091108).
Objectives
The main objective of the ODEQUS Project is to define a methodology to assess the performance of organ procurement at hospital level.
More specifically, other objectives of the project are:
- to identify and develop Quality Criteria (QC) in the 3 different types of organ donation (DBD, DCD and LD) focused mainly at hospital level;
- to create Quality Indicators (QI) in order to assess the organizational structures, clinical procedures and outcomes on the 3 types of organ donation;
- to develop auditing tools in order to evaluate the implementation of best practices described in the QC and used by the QI;
- to train healthcare professionals on how to use the QI, checklists and auditing procedures.
Methods and means
The standards of best practices will be identified according to:
- Expert’s opinion
- Literature review and research for evidence, whenever possible
- Survey sent to all European countries to know about the current use of QI at hospital level
The main fields to be considered to assess the organizational structures will be: legal framework, accreditation and certification, organization, human and material resources, education and research.
As for the clinical procedures, the main fields to be considered will be: donor identification, clinical evaluation, death diagnosis, donor maintenance, family/personal consent, organ viability, surgical recovery and preservation, number of donors/organs/transplants.
Two types of training will be designed:
- Creation of QC and QI
- Use of the evaluation tools derived from the QC and QI. External evaluations will be conducted in selected hospitals.
Strategic relevance
With the aim of representing the European countries’ diversity, the following criteria have been considered for the selection of partners:
- Expertise on some type of donation
- Experience in previous collaborative European projects such as Alliance-O, ETPOD, DOPKI, EQSTB, EULID
- Diverse efficiency of the donation programs in their countries
- Geographical and social situation
The tools to be created should be wide enough to be implemented in different target hospitals and may be later exported to other European Countries.
