Background: Nurses in intensive care units (ICU) play a key role in taking care of brain dead patients and they are often in contact with such patients given the high rate of brain deaths. Consequently, they are in a challenging and stressful condition, which may be aggravated due to the need for increased organ donation, and this may also affect the quality of care provided for these patients.
Objective: This review analyzes the different studies on the concept of brain death from both medical and legal points of view. The aim of this study was to identify the challenges the nurses face with the perception of the concept of brain death and its effects on the care provided for the patients suffering from brain death, as well as organ donation.
Methods: This Narrative review study summarizes the information obtained from relevant literature through a targeted search of library texts and electronic resources including Science Direct, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scientific Information Database (SID), IranMedex, and Magiran databases during 2000-2017 in English and Persian, on the subject of interest by keywords such as brain death, organ donation, care, legal, regulations and nursing. Finally, a total of 44 relevant articles were reviewed.
Results: Nurses play an important role in taking care of brain dead patients; therefore, recognizing challenges can be the first step in taking accurate care of these patients and subsequently maintaining the organs' health for transplants. Although there are clinical and legal uncertainties regarding the concept of brain death, nurses have an important effect on taking care of brain dead patients as well as the rate of organ donation.
Conclusion: Nurses in intensive care units should have a clear understanding of the concept of brain death in order to be able to take care of brain dead patients by avoiding psychological effects. In this regard, it is recommended that a comprehensive educational program be designed on the dimensions of brain death. Therefore, the nurses' awareness of brain death and their ability to clarify this concept to the patients' relatives would have a great effect on the decrease in the challenges and the stress imposed on the nurses. Also, there would be an increase in the quality of the care given to brain dead patients and even the rate of organ donation.
Keywords: Brain death; Care; Legal; Nurse; Organ donation.