Knowledge, attitude, and information of young people regarding organ donation: the case of students in public training foundations

INTRODUCTION: Transplantation is a surgical operation that can save thousands of patients.However, its most important limitation is the shortage of organs, the availability of which is limitedworldwide, mainly due to the reluctance of people to offer organs and tissues. The aim of our study isto depict the knowledge, attitude and information of students of public technical schools regardingorgan donation and to detect putative predictors.METHOD: For the purposes of our study 2445 active students of public technical schools of Attikaregion were approached. After a short briefing regarding the aims of the study, their written informedconsent for participation to the study was asked. The study’s questionnaire was uploaded in adatabase. The students were sent an email with a web-link pointing to the uploaded questionnaire. Wecalculated descriptive statistics and conducted univariate and multivariate analyses based on the datacollected.RESULTS: The final sample of students that gave informed consent and completed the questionnaire,after having excluded those over 30 years old, consisted of 1116 persons. Only 37.9% among themgave a correct response regarding the definition of organ donation. The willingness of students todonate their organs at/after death varied from 72.6% for the kidneys to as low as 33.1% for the face.Among students, 24.2%, 50.0% and 76.6% were reluctant to make an organ donation to an adult, achild and a close relative before death, respectively, while 2 out of 3 students were willing to accept anorgan from a live or dead person. 34.7% of students expressed their fear that an organ may beremoved from their body before their death and 39.5% reported being afraid that somebody mayremove an organ from their body after their death without their prior consent. Moreover, 3 out of 4students believe that the organs donated may be used for other purposes, such as medical research ortrade, against the donor’s will and 35.5% of students are afraid that enrolling as organ donors or havinga donor card may provoke their own death. In the multivariate analyses of knowledge, attitude andinformation regarding organ donation, important predictors of knowledge were the father’s educationallevel (p=0.012), being a blood donor (p=0.036), being a health professional (p=0.007) and thewillingness for organ donation at/after death (p=0.004). The predictors for attitude were the wish forbetter information regarding organ donation (p=0.038), the fear of organ removal after death withouthaving obtained consent in advance (p=0.001), the wish for necrotomy if necessary (p=0.032) and thebelief in the ability of a person with brain death for full rehabilitation (p=0.003). Finally, regardinginformation, being a health professional (p=0.007) and the mother’s educational level (p=0.014)emerged as important predictors.CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealed a lack of knowledge and information as well as fears of youngstudents regarding organ donation and brain death. The parent’s level of education, being a healthprofessional, the willingness of organ and tissue donation and certain fears and misperceptionsemerged as important predictors of knowledge, attitude and information regarding organ donation.Correcting these deficits may be a major step in improving the acceptance of organ donation