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Embedding changes in legislation for organ and tissue donation across England and Jersey

11 March 2021
Volume 30 · Issue 5

Abstract

Cathy Miller, Louise Hubner (louise.hubner@nhsbt.nhs.uk), Sonya Paterson, Bobbee Cotter, Phil Walton, Helen Bentley, and Claire Roberts, of NHS Blood and Transplant

The legislations around organ and tissue donation changed in 2019 and 2020 with the implementation of Human Transplantation and Anatomy (Jersey) Law 2018 and The Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019 in England.

Wales was the first nation in the UK to move from an opt-in to an opt-out system in 2015, with the implementation of the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act 2013 (Madden et al, 2020). With the opt-in system, people have to actively sign up to the register to donate their organs and tissue after death. The opt-out system works on the understanding that all adults agree to become organ donors when they die, unless they have made it known that they do not wish to donate by opting out or raising an objection. There are safeguards in place and, as such, certain groups are excluded:

The changes from an opt-in to an opt-out system of organ donation were introduced to save and improve more lives by increasing donor numbers. The blended training approach has been discussed in previous articles (Hubner et al, 2020; Miller et al, 2020; Walton et al, 2020), and we are now in the implementation and embedding phase of the change.

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