Knowledge and attitudes of medical, nursing, dentistry and health technician students towards organ donation: a pilot study.

AIM: This pilot study assesses the knowledge and attitudes of medicine, nursing, dentistry and health technical students toward organ donation.

BACKGROUND: Medicine, nursing, dentistry and health technical students' knowledge of and attitudes towards organ donation may be a factor in organ procurement rates. There is a lack of information about how Turkish medicine, nursing, dentistry and health technical students perceive organ donation, and what they know about it.

METHOD: Students completed a self-administered questionnaire after a lecture. The questionnaire included a test that was used to assess knowledge of and attitudes about organ donation.

RESULTS: Of the students, 56.8% were men, 91.4% were 18-24-year old and 89.4% from east region of Turkey. Of students, 65.5% were willing, 9% were not willing, 25.5% were hesitant about organ donation and 6% of willing students reported carrying a signed card. The most common reason for unwillingness to organ donation was worries about illegal behaviours (2.4%). There was a statistical relationship between willingness of students for organ donation and gender but were not any statistical relationship between willingness of students for organ donation and age, school, region and recognizing relatives whose need organ transplantation. Majority of the students listed transplantable organs truly but 63.1% were had no idea about organ donation process.

CONCLUSION: Students' had a lack of information about organ donation. The results of this study support a greater emphasis on providing information regarding transplantation in medicine, nursing, dentistry and health technical schools to improve the knowledge of future heath care professionals about transplantation and organ donation issues.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: These findings highlight a need to review these schools' curricula and emphasize the importance of organ transplantation. This strategy may be part of the solution to the chronic shortage of donor organs for transplantation.