Indian Journal of Urology (Jan 2000)
Attitudes of health care professionals towards organ donation
Abstract
This study aims to assess the awareness and attitudes of health care professionals towards organ donation. 691 medical students participated in the study. There were 595 undergraduates, 65 interns and 31 postgraduate stu-dents. The general consensus was that there is a need for or-gan donation. 75% of the participants were able to un-derstand the concept of brain death. The definition of brain death was not known to 20%. None of the participants had complete knowledge as to who should authorize brain death as stated in the "Transplantation of Human Organs Bill". 20% emphasized the need for the presence of a neu-rologist/neurosurgeon, along with other qualified person-nel, in a team to certify brain death. It was noticed that participants committed to organ donation encouraged their friends and relatives to donate their organs. They agreed that organ donation should be included in the medi-cal curriculum. The study reveals that there is a poor understanding of the concept of brain death and organ donation even among medical students. It was also observed that they were in-terested in knowing more about the subject of organ do-nation.
