Knowledge levels and attitudes of middle school students towards organ donation in diyarbakir city center

Organ donation is, by the donor?s free will when he is still alive, the allowance and certification of his tissues and organs to be used by other patients medically. The present study was carried out to determine the knowledge and attitude level of high school students in the central province of Diyarbakır towards organ donation. The population of the present descriptive and cross sectional study is the high school students in central province of Diyarbakır. Eleven high schools (n:5631) including the private, science, vocational and Anatolian high schools in four central districts of Diyarbakır were selected by the method of simple random sampling for the current study. From these selected schools, a branch was determined for each 9, 10, 11 and 12 th grades by the method of simple random sampling. Out of 1330 determined students, 936 (70.4%) were reached and consulted. Along with the literature review, a 43 item questionnaire developed by researchers including students? ideas about demographic features and organ donation was carried out via direct observation method. The collected data were analyzed using percentage, mean, Ki- square (X²) under the statistical packet programs. The average of students? age was found to be 17.5±1.44. While 1.1% of them stated that they want and have donated their organs, 47.3 % declared that they want but have not been able to donate, the remaining 51.6% said they did not want to do such thing. As for their reasons of organ donation, 26.6% with the desire to protect the integrity of the body turns out to be the first one. When their knowledge of organ donation was analyzed, 91.7% students were found to have understood the issue correctly, 7.0% as partially correctly, 1.3% wrongly. 65.6% of the students stated that they had not got information about legal regulation on organ donation, 33.8% of them noted that such need could be supplied by cadavers and alive donators. A meaningful correlation was found between sex, knowing the definition of organ donation and a desire to donate their organs. In conclusion, most of the students had the tendency of knowing the definition of organ donation at a high rate however their level of the knowledge about the need for organ donation should be increased. Key words: Organ donation, mıddle school students, the level of knowledge and attitud