Organ Donation- Awareness and Attitude among the General Staff Working in a Corporate Hospital in Dakshina Kannada District

Organ donation is a life saver of patients in need. In general people are aware of organ donation, but lot of interpretation is still prevalent. Cultural practices also becomes a barrier for organ donation. With an intention of promoting organ donation among public, the present research is undertaken. By measuring the level of awareness and finding the attitude of organ donation among the general staff working in a corporate hospital in Dakshina Kannada district, the Investigator of the present study, tries to understand the appropriate strategy to promote the awareness among the people about the organ donation. The methodology of the study includes a prospective cross-sectional research design, where all the general staff (N=150) were chosen from a corporate hospital in Mangalore. Universal sampling technique was used. The study was conducted for a period of 6 months where data was collected with the questionnaire method and information regarding awareness and attitude of the general staff in the corporate hospital was collected and analysed. The result showed that 91.3% were aware about the organ donation. But the investigator felt that appropriate information was lacking as only 64% of them knew that both living and deceased person could donate organs, and 12% of them thought it was only the deceased person could donate and 9.3% felt it was only the living person could donate organ. So it was also seen that 77.3% felt that they required more information of organ donation. The study also showed that 14.6% of the respondents did not support the idea of organ donation, because of varied reasons like misconception of organ donation, culture, and practices of the family. The reasons for not opting for organ donation was that 2% respondents had no belief in it, 12% felt that the organ which is donated would not reach the person in need, 29.3% felt that the family members would not approve for it and 4% felt that organ donation would disfigure them. It was seen that 52.6% of them had already signed for the organ donation will. Hence the study supported that awareness is required for the public to promote organ donation.