Attitudes of intensive care nurses towards brain death and organ transplantation: instrument development and testing.

Aims: This paper reports the development and testing of an instrument assessing attitudes of Korean intensive care unit nurses.

Background: Reluctance by healthcare professionals to identify brain-dead patients as a potential donor is one reason for a shortfall in transplantable organs in all countries. Organ donation from brain-dead patients is a particularly contentious issue in Korea, following recent legal recognition of brain death within the cultural context of Confucian beliefs.