Every personal bereavement hides an even larger tragedy as many lives could have been saved by just a single pledge to donate organs. The present study was conducted to emphasize this attitude among medical students who are the future hopes to improve the poor scenario of organ donation in our society. The aim of this study is to determine the awareness, perception and willingness for organ donation among the medical students. A cross-sectional study with purposive sampling was conducted in medical students of Basaveshwara Medical College, Chitradurga, Karnataka, India. After obtaining consent, information was collected by a self-administered questionnaire. Out of the 340 students, 46 % were male and 54 % were female. Awareness about organ donation was very good in 11.77 %, good in 75.29 % and poor in 12.94 %, with predominant source of information being the media/internet (40 %). Majority (86.76 %) knew that organ donation is legal in India. 75.29 % were aware of the shortage of organs. 97.65 % knew that kidney can be donated, 81 % knew cornea, liver and heart can be donated and only 32 % knew that lungs and pancreas can be donated. Positive perception towards organ donation was seen in 50.29 % and 68.82 % were ready to become organ donors. More willingness for organ donation was seen among females. Overall awareness about organ donation was good, but still fifty percent students had negative perception. Most of them knew about kidney donation, but not much of other organs like lungs and pancreas. Positive attitude towards organ donation could be enhanced among the students by including it in the medical curriculum so that it will also improve the perception of the entire community in the long run and slowly work up in narrowing the vast shortage of organs in India.

Background: Blood donation is very vital to save human life as there is no substitute for human blood. Even though the hospital workers are well aware about blood donation, many of them are not into voluntary blood donation. Hence the present study focuses on the hospital workers.Methods: A cross-sectional study with purposive sampling was done in the workers of Basaveshwara Medical College. After obtaining verbal consent, the data was collected by a pre-designed, pre-structured, self-administered questionnaire. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.Results: A total of 258 workers participated, the mean age was 30.83±7.44; 97 (37.6%) were donors and 161 (62.4%) were non-donors. The donors were mostly in the age group 31-40 yrs (48.1%), males (63.3%), those who were single (40.2%), graduates (45.4%), belonging to socio-economic class I (56.7%). Most were voluntary donors (70.1%), 48.5% had donated 2-5 times, 24.7% were regular donors with 37.5% donating yearly. The predominant reason for not donating blood among the non-donors was ‘no request for blood’ (63.4%). Around 175 (67.8%) were willing to be voluntary donors in the future, whereas 57 (22.1%) were willing to donate only for family and friends and 26(10.1%) were not willing to donate blood. Willingness to donate was found to be significantly associated with age, education, occupation, socio-economic class, source of information and the type of donation.Conclusions: Males and those in higher socio-economic class predominantly donated blood. Donors considered blood donation as a humanitarian cause and felt it gives moral satisfaction than the non-donors. Non-donors thought blood donation leads to weakness/anemia and is harmful to health than the donors.

Background: Everyone relishes having a peaceful and safe society to live in. But nobody thinks about the police who work hard to keep our community safe and secure. They have to face potentially hazardous situations that can result in physical or mental trauma or even death in the line of duty. This study will help to reveal the stress and coping strategies employed by the police personnel of Chitradurga city. To determine the stressful situations faced by the police personnel and to ascertain the positive & negative coping strategies employed by the study participants.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among the police personnel in all the five police stations in Chitradurga city for a period of one year. Complete enumeration method was used to include 282 police men and women in the study. A pre-designed, pre-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. The analysis was done using SPSS version 20. Appropriate statistical tests were applied.Results: The mean age of the participants was 36.13±10.33. Majority of them were males (89%), Hindus (95.4%), graduates (49.6%), living in their own house (38.7%), hailing from a nuclear family (62.1%) and belonged to socio-economic status class I (50%) according to modified BG Prasad’s classification.Conclusions: The stress was found to be significantly associated with work-related factors like difficulties in meeting deadlines, insufficient personal time, inadequate family time, needing changes in the department, eagerness to go to work and job satisfaction.