Tissue Banking: Relationship with Blood Donor and Organ Donor Card Status

Understanding the relationships among altruistic health acts may serve to aid therapeutic research advances. In this paper, we report on the links between two such behaviours—donating blood and carrying an organ donor card—and willingness to donate urological tissue to a tissue bank. Reasons for the differential willingness to do so are examined in this paper. A systematic sample of 259 new and returning attendees at a tertiary urology referral clinic in Ireland completed a self-report questionnaire in an outpatient setting. In addition to demographic details, details of known diagnosis of malignancy and family history of cancer; attitudes to tissue donation for research purposes were gauged using a 5-point Likert scale. Both blood donors and organ donor card carriers were more likely to be willing to donate tissue for research purposes. Blood donors were more likely want to know their overall results in comparison to nonblood donors and want their samples to be used for nonprofit research. Our hypothesis that being a blood donor would be a better predictor to donate urological tissue than being an organ donor card carrier borne out by the trends reported above. 1. Introduction Working to increase willingness to donate tissue collected for diagnostic purposes to a tumour bank has been highlighted as an important factor in clinical research [1]. Understanding the determinants of altruistic behaviours in health research has long been featured as a research question [2]. In this paper, we look at the link between the individual altruistic acts of blood donation and organ donor card carrying, and willingness to donate urological tissue to a tumour bank. The dominant model of understanding the motivations around blood donation has been the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) [3], which assumes that intention is the most contiguous determinant of action, and that intention is determined by perceived behavioural control, attitude, and subjective norm. Key demographic findings of a greater likelihood of donating blood include being male [4] and comparative youth: cohorts aged 56 and over tend to be underrepresented in blood donors [5]. The main psychological determinants have been found to be altruism [2], perceived control, and self-identity as a blood donor. Perceived control is a stronger predictor of motivation to donate blood ahead of positive attitude [6, 7], where there is a stronger intention to donate if the prospective donor thinks that donation clinics are accessible. Self-identity as a blood donor develops with repeated donations thus strengthening