KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES REGARDING BLOOD DONATION AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF A PRIVATE MEDICAL COLLEGE, LAHORE

Abstract

Background:

Blood donation helps save the lives of millions. Voluntary blood donation is necessary for a sustainable blood supply. To determine the knowledge, attitude and practices of 1st to 5th year medical students about blood donation and their association with the sociodemographic factors in a private medical college.

Materials and Methods:

A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students from the first to final year from April to September 2022 after approval from the Ethical Review Board. Data was collected on a pretested self-administered questionnaire from all the students who were present on the day of data collection after obtaining verbal consent from them. The data was analyzed by SPSS-22. Chi-square/Fisher’s exact was applied to find out the association of sociodemographic factors with knowledge, attitude and practices of blood donation. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered as significant

Results:

Out of 631 students, 601 who filled out the questionnaire had 0.5% good, 14.6% satisfactory and 84.9% poor knowledge. A positive attitude was reported by 80% of students. However, only 28.1% had ever donated blood. There is a statistically significant association of overall knowledge (p-value=0.01) and overall attitude (0.013) with the year of class. The practice of donating blood has a significant relationship with age (p-value=0.043), gender (0.000) and year of study (p-value=0.009).

Conclusion:

The overall knowledge of medical students about blood donation was poor. The majority of the students had a positive attitude about blood donation and only more than one quarter had donated blood. There is a significant association of the academic year with knowledge regarding blood donation.