Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the awareness of organ transplantation and willingness to donate among Saudi Health Colleges students and the impact of gender, year of study, and field of specialization on this. This is a cross-sectional survey-based study. The survey was distributed to all the students attending the annual national conference of Saudi Health Colleges students held in 2018. The survey had two parts. The first part collected the information about gender, university, college of specialization, and year of study. The second part asked 10 questions, seven of which were about the types, causes, treatment of organ failure (awareness questions), and three of which were about their willingness to donate (altruism questions). The participants had three response options: "Yes", "No" and "I don't know. Descriptive statistics (mean, standard) and the frequencies were generated for each parameter. Categorical data were compared using Chi-square and continuous data using an independent t-test or paired t-test. A total of 821 respondents completed the questionnaire; 58.1% were female, 41.3% studying medicine, 25.1% applied medical sciences, 12.7% pharmacy, 9.6% dentistry, and 4.5% nursing 4.5%. The overall awareness of the correct responses constituted 60.4% while 12.3 % gave incorrect responses and 27.3% did not know what the answers were. The highest awareness score was about the concept of brain death (86.4%). The overall awareness score was significantly higher than the altruism score (62.7% and 45.7% respectively (P = 0.0001). Female respondents proved more aware than the male respondents in all the questions did. However, the differences reached the significant levels in four of the ten questions. If we split and summate the responses into "awareness" questions and "altruism" questions, we find that, although female students score higher in both categories, this reaches the significant level for the altruism score (59.90% vs. 45.60% (P = 0.0001). Final year students were significantly more aware than the freshmen in seven of the 10 questions posed with the biggest gap seen in the awareness that Islamic Sharia permits donating organs after death (82.3% vs. 49.6% (P = 0.0001). When we compare of responses by the college, we find that significant differences between the College of Medicine students and applied medical sciences in two questions with the former having a higher awareness score. The overall awareness score was significantly higher than the altruism score (62.7% and 45.7% respectively). Female students have higher altruistic score than male students. The scores are significantly higher in the senior students than in the junior ones.