Knowledge regarding organ donation of university students in Catholic Univer-sity of Cuenca: a cross-sectional study

Resumen

Organ donation is the process of surgically removing an organ or tissue from one person (the organ donor) and placing it into another person (the recipient). Transplantation is necessary because the recipient's organ has failed or has been damaged by disease or injury, a benevolent human act, has become a medical tool that has helped many people who would have died by diseases. However, this medical action involves concepts that the human being has always been intrigued by life and death, concepts that generate the debate on the acceptance and the refusal to donate organs of a deceased family member.

Objective: The objective of this work was to determine the co-education level on organ donation among university students. 

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of 80 undergraduate students from Nursing and Accounting courses of the Catholic University of Cuenca, Ecuador to determine their knowledge around the topic of organ donation. Tests were carried out individually in 40-minute sessions according to the methods of Carrión-Vidal et al. Before the study, signed informed consent, guaranteeing their confidentiality and anonymity, was obtained from the participants.

Results: The results indicate: 91% of nursing students and 84% of accounting students know the definition of organ donation; in relation to the organic law of organ donation, 65% of the nursing students knew about it, as well as 22% of the accounting students.

Conclusions: In relation to the information referring when a person can donate an organ, 69.8% of the participants passed this part of the test, contrasting with a previous study carried out by the Faculty of Medicine, Universidad de Cuenca in which they found that 92.2% of the participants answered correctly.