Knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of the faculty of theology students about organ donation and transplantation

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: The increase in non-communicable chronic diseases has brought with it an increase in the frequency of organ failures, causing the gap between the number of transplanted patients and the waiting patients to deepen. One of the important factors in people's thought of being a donor is their religious beliefs. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of religious officer candidates about organ donation and transplantation, and to determine the factors that may be related. METHOD: The study is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted between April 1, 2022 and June 1, 2022. The study group consists of 260 students studying at the Faculties of Theology at Sakarya University. The data of the study were collected with a questionnaire form. The questionnaire was filled in digitally. The data obtained in the study were analyzed in the IBM SPSS (version 20.0) package program in computer environment. The conformity of the data to the normal distribution was evaluated with the Shapiro Wilk test. Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests were used in the analysis of non-normally distributed data. The relationship between continuous variables was tested with Spearman correlation analysis. The statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05. RESULTS: In study group, 166 (63.8%) were female and 94 (36.2%) were male. The mean age of the participants was 22.8 (±3.4), and the median was 22.0 years. While 126 (48.5%) of the participants were undecided about organ donation, 72 (27.7%) of them were positive about organ donation. There was no participant who donated and had a donation card. Those with a family income between 4000 and 6000 ₺ were found to have a higher score in Knowledge Level Scale on Organ- Tissue Donation and Transplantation, than those with a family income of less than 4000 (p=0.022). The Organ-Tissue Donation and Transplantation -Attitude Score was higher among the participants who had a positive idea of being an organ donor, who expressed a positive view of organ donation in Islam, and who thought that organ donation from non-Muslims could be obtained (p<0.05 for each). CONCLUSION: In the study, the attitudes of the participants about organ-tissue transplantation showed a positive correlation with their level of knowledge. It was observed that the inadequacies in the level of knowledge had a negative impact on the attitude towards organ-tissue transplantation. In this context, we think that the persons authorized to give religious information should be more knowledgeable about organ donation and that this issue should be emphasized in the education process. Keywords: Cleric, faculty of theology, organ-tissue donation, organ-tissue transplantation.