Perspectives des professionnels de la santé face au don d'organes après décès cardiocirculatoire suivant un retrait de traitement chez un patient apte ou une aide médicale à mourir

In the summer of 2014, the case of a conscious patient, respirator dependent, who requested a withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy and expressed the wish to donate his organs shook the Quebec organ donation and transplantation community. It was the beginning of an important reflection on the acceptability of organ donation in conscious and competent people who have chosen to stop vital treatment.  This reflection was timely as the Quebec government was preparing its End-of-Life Care Act, which would make medical assistance in dying (MAID) legal. Since it was clinically possible for some patients to donate organs following MAID, it was likely that the legalization of this practice would increase the number of conscious patients wishing to donate their organs when they would have chosen to die. The literature on the ethical issues raised by this type of organ donation was then almost non-existent and, at the time the research project began, practice guidelines did not exist in Quebec and Canada. It therefore became imperative to identify these ethical issues and to analyze them in order to contribute to the guidance of these new practices. There was also no study describing the perspectives of health professionals regarding such donations.  The objectives of this doctoral project were (i) to identify the ethical issues raised by organ donation in a conscious and competent patient requesting withdrawal of life sustaining therapy or MAID; (ii) to analyze these issues using ethical theories; (iii) to obtain and understand the perspectives of health professionals on the issues raised by organ donation in these particular contexts; (iv) finally, to compare the perspectives of professionals to the policies that have been adopted in Quebec since its inception. We therefore conducted a qualitative exploratory study through interviews with organ donation professionals likely to be involved in the organ donation process by a conscious patient who has requested withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy or MAID. Our sample included physicians and nurses in intensive care, operating room or involved in organ donation in two Montreal hospital centers that are very active in organ donation (CHUM and Hôpital Sacré-Cœur) and at Transplant Québec.  We identified ethical issues through a literature review and by analyzing the perspectives of professionals. The main ethical issues are related to respect for patient autonomy, information to be provided to potential donors, conscientious objection by professionals, the possibility for recipients to refuse organs procured after MAID, the acceptability of organ donation following a confidential MAID, the dead donor rule, the acceptability of directing an organ to a specific recipient designated by the donor and the acceptability of choosing MAID in order to make organ donation possible. We first analyzed these ethical issues using Norman Daniels' wide reflexive equilibrium model and then incorporated participants' perspectives on the various issues using the normative empirical - reflexive equilibrium model into our analysis. Based on our results, we can conclude that : (i) organ donation for competent patients requesting MAID or withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies was generally ethically acceptable within the legal context in effect at the time of our research; (ii) patients requesting MAID and suffering from a disease compatible with organ donation should be informed of the possibility of organ donation; and (iii) conscientious objections should be respected as long as they do not compromise patients' access to care; iv) recipients should be offered the opportunity to refuse organs procured after MAID when they are placed on the waiting list; and v) a patient who wishes to donate his or her organs following MAID that he or she wishes to keep confidential should be informed of all the implications related to the specific context of the procurement and should consent to a breach of confidentiality in order to minimize the risk of undermining public trust in organ donation.  Some of these conclusions are contrary to current policies.  Our study has contributed to a better understanding of the ethical issues raised by organ donation in these new contexts. In addition, we identify issues that require further reflection and possibly a revision of the guidelines in place.  Many questions remain and new ones arise as changes to the MAID eligibility criteria are foreseen (MAID outside of the end-of-life context, in cases of mental illness or by advanced request).

Keyphrases: medical assistance in dying, organ donation, ethics, withdrawal of life sustaining therapy, qualitative research, reflexive equilibrium