Medical Students Perception about the Donation and Transplantation of Organs and Tissues

Objective: To evaluate medical students’ perception about organ and tissue donation and transplantation. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, with quantitative analysis, which evaluated students from the 1st to the 12th semester of the Bahia Medical School of the Bahia Federal University (FMB/UFBA), grouped by year of graduation (1st to 6th year), through a questionnaire. Data were statistically analyzed using R for Windows, considering significant values of p ≤ 0.05. Results: Of the 393 participants, 207 (52.7%) were female, 250 (63.3%) were between 21 to 25 years old, 144 (36.6%) had no religion, and 80 (20.3%) were boarding students. Of all the interviewees, 159 (40.5%) self-assessed their knowledge as regular and 153 (38.8%) as bad and terrible. About the exposure to the subject, 222 (56.6%) had never attended a class and, among those who had, 187 (60.1%) evaluated the information as insufficient. A total of 324 students (82.4%) would have the intention of being a post-mortem donor and 42 (61.6%) would accept to participate in a living donor transplantation, although 245 (62.3%) said they did not know the risks. Among the students, 327 (83.2%) said they knew the concept of brain death, 119 (30.3%) the legal terms of donation, and 105 (26.7%) the donor maintenance measures. However, 72 (18.3%) said they had a good knowledge of how to diagnose brain death. A total of 275 (70%) got right what is needed to declare a donor. There were 359 answers that would exclude alcoholics, smokers and users of illicit drugs from the transplant list, and 363 (92.7%) considered that the severity of the problem is the most appropriate criterion for priority on the waiting list. Conclusion: Students perceive their level of knowledge as unsatisfactory and understanding about specific issues is still low. No significant influence of sociodemographic aspects was observed regarding the desire to be a donor.