The effect of hematopoietic stem cell transplant awareness on volunteer donor status in university students

This study was planned single-group pretest-posttest design semi-experimental. Study aims to determine the effect of hematopoietic stem cell transplant awareness on volunteer donation status among university students, reached within the campus boundaries of Tekirdag Namık Kemal University from faculty and vocational school with permission to conduct the study. The sampling of the study consists of 1216 students aged between 18-25 who studied in the 2018-2019 academic year and agreed to participate in the study. The data of the research were collected by a questionnaire prepared by the researchers. The survey consists of three parts and 46 questions in total. The survey consists of demographic characteristics, knowledge questions about hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, questions measuring participants' attitudes to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and multiple-choice questions determining donation motivation. After the application of the questionnaire form, the form consisting of post-training information and attitude questions was applied again. In the evaluation of the data, mean, standard deviation, median, frequency, minimum, maximum, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, Pearson chi-square, Spearman's correlation tests were used. Results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and significance was set at p<0.05. The average age of the participants in the study was 20.34 ± 1.62, 67.8% were women and 82.5% were undergraduate. While the mean score of students' knowledges about hematopoietic stem cell transplantation was 28.72 ± 22.01 before training, it was calculated as 81.41 ± 15.90 after the training. The average increase in students' hematopoietic stem cell transplant knowledge score after education was 52.68 ± 24.35 point, this increase was statistically significant (p<0.01). The awareness of needs of hematopoietic stem cell donors in Turkey was 51.9% before the training and it increased to 92.1%. While 25.5% of students stated that they absolutely wanted to donate hematopoietic stem cells before training, this rate increased to 45.9% after training. There was a statistically significant difference between the students' desire to donate hematopoietic stem cells according to their gender and their departments before and after the training (p <0.01). In the research, the knowledge levels of the students participating in the research about hematopoietic stem cell transplantation were insufficient. Our study shows that the given training revealed a positive effect to university students' knowledge and attitudes towards the hematopoietic stem cell donation.