Abstract

Olang Orkideh*, Bakhshi Mohammadhossein, Khodakarami Mehran, Sohrabi Mohammadreza, Khodadadi Abbas

As medical students should be prepared to face with Brain dead donors’ families in the future, we tried to study their general information and attitude in their basic science stage.All students in the first two years of medical education were asked to fill a questionnaire for the knowledge and attitudes towards deceased organ donation in 2012 in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science in Tehran.Three hundred thirty five of 451 of attending students in the first two years of medical education filled the questionnaires (the response rate was 74.3%). The mean age was 20.18±0.97 years and 59.2% were female. 93.7% were familiar with brain dead donation(BDD) concept but 24.4% still believed in the chance of recovery after brain death. The main source of their information was media(37.2%).78% agreed withdonation in the case of brain death for themselves or their familieswith higher rate among females (85.2% versus 68.1%,p value<0.001).246 students (73.9%) considered that a team was required for brain death diagnosis to help the family to believe the fact easier (P value<0.001). The positive attitude toward BDD increased enormously through 10 years of public education especially throughmedia