Perception of Brazilian medical students toward organ donation

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Brazil ranks second in gross numbers of kidney and liver transplantations, but deceased organ donation is still far below the national demand for organs. Apart from a high family refusal rate, another significant barrier is healthcare workers' inappropriate knowledge concerning organ donation and transplantation. Since most of them have recently graduated from university, this study aimed to evaluate the awareness and attitudes of medical students concerning organ donation. METHODS: Between August and September 2021, a web-based survey with 10 overlapping questions was sent to medical students from several Brazilian universities after advertisements on social media. RESULTS: A total of 391 (60% female, mean age: 23 [17-41] years) students answered the survey. Most of them (91%) would like to donate organs in case of death, and 75% have already notified their family. The main reasons for not becoming a donor were fear of body manipulation (n=3) or family reaction (n=2) and religious reasons (n=2). When inquired, 54% were unaware of brain death criteria, and half of them claimed to have never discussed the topic in medical classes. Except for Glasgow coma scale (97%), pupillary (72%), and corneal (53%) reflexes, less than 25% knew other reflexes required for brain death diagnosis. CONCLUSION: Most medical students declared themselves as organ donors, and most informed their families. However, many students have never learned about crucial steps toward organ donation, which may impact their adequate recognition of potential organ donors later in life.

Conhecimento do estudante de medicina sobre doação de órgãos

“…A doação de órgãos é um processo delicado que depende da participação direta da sociedade e do envolvimento e comprometimento do médico, que se encontra na linha de frente, para a identificação do potencial doador, diagnóstico de morte encefálica e na entrevista da família do doador. Para tanto, faz-se necessário maior conhecimento por parte dos estudantes de Medicina, pois muitos carecem de conhecimento básico sobre o tema, o que inviabilizaria o seu papel em promover a doação de órgãos e minimizar a recusa familiar 12,[16][17][18] . Assim, acreditamos que intervenções educativas, ao longo da graduação, sejam necessárias para que os estudantes preencham as lacunas de conhecimento.…”

Would you donate your body? Attitudes of students of nursing and physiotherapy towards body donation for educational and scientific purposes

“…Analyzing the literature that focused on body donation, one can note that a substantial portion of such studies is devoted to the attitude of students, from both medical and non-medical faculties, to the act of donating organs for transplantation [10,12,15,25,29,32,33,35,36,39,43,44,48], to the cadaver dissection for teaching anatomy [2,6,24] as well as to the attitude towards body donation among university staff [4,5,13,38,47], or among the elderly [31]. There are but a few studies that deal with the attitude to whole body donation after death, particularly among the students who do not plan to become medical doctors.…”