Clinical decision making and ethics in communications between donor families and recipients: how much should they know?

Advances in organ recovery and transplantation have provided us with the skills and opportunity to save, extend, and improve the quality of life for many. But with these opportunities have come challenges to redefine our practice and relationships with donor and recipient families. Although most donor families and transplant recipients receive some information about each other, many still do not. In the past, communication between donor families and recipients has been anonymous and highly controlled, with much inconsistency among and within the transplant community, leaving many involved in the process confused and frustrated. Transplant professionals may wish to consider critically the common ethical values of autonomy, beneficence, salience and benefit of choice in making decisions about information shared with and contact between donor families and recipients.