Are Medical Students Having Enough Knowledge about Organ Donation

Objectives: Organ donation and transplantation is an important aspect of treatment of chronic condition in today’s era of medicine.But still there is no formal education provided to the medical students on this topic. Through this study, we aim to determine the level of knowledge among medical students regarding organ donation and their overall attitude towards the concept of organ donation in a medical college in Southern part of India. Methods: A cross sectional study was done at Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences, Mandya, Karnataka. Data was collected using a pretested anonymous questionnaire designed by the authors. Students were approached in their lecture halls and asked to participate after explaining the importance of study and obtaining oral consent. In a sample of 400 medical students, 393 valid questionnaires were considered for the study. Data was entered in MS Excel and analyzed by SPSS version 10.0 . Chi Square test was used to compare categorical variables. Results: 393 students participated in this study out of 400, response rate: 98.25% with 48.6% males and 51.4% females. This included students from all the four years of medical school. Mean age was found to be 20.15 years with SD 01.49 years. All the students knew the term organ donation. Majority (55.2%) answered media as their major source of information on this topic. 300 students (76.3%) answered that brain dead persons can be considered for organ donation. 302 (76.8%) students regarded infections as a contraindication to organ donation. Heart and kidney was majorly answered as the organs that can be donated. 355 students (90.4%) agreed that organ donation is a gift of life to another individual, though only 225 (57.3%) were willing to donate their organs. 56 (14.2%) respondents believed their religion doesn’t allow them to donate organs, while 29 (7.4%) believed that organ donation may disfigure their body after death. Conclusions: Overall medical students do know about the term organ donation, though there is significant lack of knowledge on the topic. The reasons for this are many, for instance, no formal education on this issue, lower rate of transplantations done in India compared to the developed countries and hence, students have less exposure to such scenarios. Introducing this topic as a part of the medical curriculum may have a significant impact on the improvement of medical students’ knowledge. There is overall a positive attitude of medical students towards organ donation. There is a high level of motivation and desire among the students to learn more on this topic of organ donation which was clearly indicated by the high level of participation in this survey.