Cadastrar e doar, eis a intenção : fatores de influência na doação de medula óssea

Abstract

The central objective of this study is to identify factors capable of influencing intentions to register and donate bone marrow. Bone marrow donation is the process of donating bone marrow cells capable of treating several potentially fatal pathologies, and is often considered the only treatment option for certain illnesses. However, for donation to occur, there must be compatibility between patient and donor. Therefore, social marketing campaigns are necessary to raise awareness about the importance of donating bone marrow and help find compatible donors for patients who need transplants. To this end, this work uses as a basis the Theory of Planned Behavior (TCP), which focuses on understanding how people make decisions and engage in specific behaviors. TPB assumes that people's decisions are rational and that the available information is systematically used to take a certain action, taking into account the consequences of their actions before deciding to engage in a certain behavior. In addition, factors were added based on field immersion, through investigation at the João Pessoa Blood Center, which resulted in the constructs “Understanding of the donation process” and “Trust in the services provided by the Blood Center”. From this perspective, discussions about the intention to donate bone marrow are aligned with the conception of social marketing, by addressing the aspects that permeate behavioral decisions, since the main purpose of social marketing is to change personal and collective behavior, so as to that TCP can help in understanding how this can be achieved. Furthermore, the TCP can be applied to bone marrow donation campaigns, identifying the factors that lead people to plan and act on bone marrow donation, and using this information to create more effective campaigns to increase donation. For this research, we chose to study the intention to donate, since intention is a strong predictor of behavior, being a predecessor of actual behavior. In view of this, this research converges with the discussions present in the literature and provides a more accurate analysis of the topic in the Brazilian context, enabling the development of studies that add knowledge to the scope of public health policies, bringing direct contributions to society. The methodological approach of the research is quantitative in nature, and data collection occurred through a structured questionnaire, with a final sample of 303 respondents. It is noteworthy that, with the aim of empirically analyzing the hypotheses developed, the following constructs were developed: Attitude, Subjective norms, Perceived control, Information, Confidence in the service and Intention to register and Intention to donate, which were subjected to descriptive and structural equation modeling. As main results, it is observed that the intention to register as a bone marrow donor is influenced by the desire to help others, people's approval, personal perceptions, understanding of the donation process and trust in the services provided by the Blood center. The intention to register is confirmed as a predictor of the intention to donate bone marrow.