A negative point of view of the social services students about organ donation and transportation

Abstract Background The gap between the number of patients waiting for a transplant and the number of organ recipients increases especially in muslim countries. Social services are responsible for convincing persons to donate their organs for transplantation in Turkey. The aim of the study is to measure the knowledge and awareness of social services students', as they become a part of future convincers of transplantation. Methods Knowledge and point of view about organ transplantation (OT) were asked using headtohead interviews. Layered sample (grade) was chosen from social sciences faculty and 442 students were interviewed. SPSS 23.0 was used in descriptive and regression analysis. Results Mean age was 21.37±1.94 and 45.1% were male. Knowledge of OT was sufficient (20.1%) according to themselves. Only 1.2% donated their organs. According to knowledge questions 69.3% had insufficient information about organ donation and tranplantation. They would receive (54%) a transplant from their relatives and donate to their relatives (67.6%) if needed. Religion and ethnicity were important factors in logistic regression; 8.6% said that their religion finds donation objectinable. Participants thought that Turkish transplantation centers has insufficient technical equipment (39.8%). According to our logistic model, students unconcerned with religion/ethnicity (β = 1,608;p