Organ transplantation is considered one of the most significant advances in modern medicine and is a successful procedure in terms of patients survival, being nowadays the best treatment option for patients with many pathologies. The donation process is insufficient to cover the transplantation needs of population, therefore, is necessary the development of new strategies to strengthen the experience and effectiveness of existing programs. The lack of knowledge of health professionals, their perception and attitude towards topics related with the donation process, could turn them into facilitators or barriers for potential donors identification. For this reason, the available sources, attitude towards donation, legislation and knowledge of involved processes in tissue and organ donation are critic. Given the influence of health professionals the objectives of this project are defined: determine which is the knowledge and skills of health professionals in charge of organ and tissue transplantation in the REGIONAL 1, assessed through an educative tool to contribute to the improvement of an efficient program of Organ and Tissue Donation and in that way, establish recommendations to increase donation rates, with an special focus in health centre's activities in the country.MethodologyThere was an study performed based on the analysis of knowledge evaluation in the organ and tissue donation-transplantation process with participant health staff in the educative tool called ¨Curso taller primer respondiente del potencial donante de organos y tejidos¨ (¨Workshop course first respondent of organ and tissue potential donor¨). This course included an evaluative format that was filled in anonymously by participants before and after receiving the course's content. The study was developed in IPS health staff who belong to the REGIONAL I, of National's organ and tissue donation and transplantation network. In order to evidence if there are differences in course participant's knowledge before and after assisting to it, we used McNemar's test. ResultsBetween july-2011 and june-2012, the ¨Workshop course first respondent of organ and tissue potential donor¨ was completed and there were 303 respondents doctors, nurses and nurse assistants included. At the beginning of the course answers were accretive related to legislation, donor selection, brain death and donor maintenance were around 50%. It wasn't possible to determine the profession that could generate risk i donor detection and associated processes. After the course, 72% of the questions were answered correctly, which represents an statistically significant increase. This change shows statistic significance using McNemar's test and provide a value of: p=0.00.DiscussionThe health staff participating in the workshop course coming from involved units donor generators, show a knowledge shortfall regarding the donation transplantation process, which could turn them into barriers for the process
