Knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of university students towards the organ donation: A qualitative study

Both vascularized composite transplants and allogeneic transplants, as they depend on donations, are due to psychosocial factors that, knowing them, allow us to take appropriate educational attitudes. Objective: to explore the knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of nursing and computer science students regarding the donation and transplantation of organs and vascularized compound allogeneic transplants. Material and methods: exploratory research with qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with 10 nursing and computer science students. Results: three categories: knowledge, showing disinformation; beliefs such as that there is nothing after death, that donation is altruistic and that their professions help raise awareness; and attitudes such as that they tend to talk about death openly, but not about donation. Discussion: university students are aware, but they are not well informed, finding evidence such as that religion or donating blood or marrow does not influence to be an organ donor and knowing recipients or someone with some disfigurement and talking about death does influence. Conclusions: there are beliefs that favor the donation of organs and vascularized composite tissue in university students, but also a significant misinformation and a lack of dialogue about becoming a donor that damages said donation and the educational role in this regard at a professional level.