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The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends

Introduction: Voluntary body donation (VBD) programs form the backbone of cadaveric teaching and learning in medical schools. It benefits the medical fraternity the most. Yet, there is a dearth of VBD practice among medical students. We aimed to understand the knowledge and attitude of first-year me...

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Autores principales: Ganapathy, Arthi, Joy, Praisy, Rout, Sipra, Gaikwad, Manisha
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cureus 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10362406/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37485180
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.40775
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author Ganapathy, Arthi
Joy, Praisy
Rout, Sipra
Gaikwad, Manisha
author_facet Ganapathy, Arthi
Joy, Praisy
Rout, Sipra
Gaikwad, Manisha
author_sort Ganapathy, Arthi
collection PubMed
description Introduction: Voluntary body donation (VBD) programs form the backbone of cadaveric teaching and learning in medical schools. It benefits the medical fraternity the most. Yet, there is a dearth of VBD practice among medical students. We aimed to understand the knowledge and attitude of first-year medical students in a tertiary institute with a systematic review of willingness toward VBD among undergraduate students worldwide. Methods: The first-year medical undergraduates were given a 12-item questionnaire to assess their knowledge and attitude toward VBD. Statistical tests were applied to analyze the difference between the variables. We systematically searched Google Scholar, PubMed, and SCOPUS databases until October 15, 2022. Data concerning knowledge, awareness, and attitude toward VBD among undergraduates of medical backgrounds were extracted and analyzed qualitatively. Results: A total of 82.5% of students returned the completed responses. A significant association was seen between their attitudes toward whole body donation by strangers (p=0.043) and family members (p=0.035). The religion of the participants significantly affected their opinions on VBD and their willingness to pledge themselves (p=0.034). For the review, 20 studies were selected to be analyzed qualitatively. These studies included 4232 undergraduate students globally who were assessed for knowledge, awareness, and attitude toward VBD. Around 50% of the studies were published in India. The first study included was published in 2008. Seven studies were exclusively conducted on medical undergraduates, while the rest consisted of a mixed cohort. The attitude and knowledge of medical undergraduates on VBD were assessed via questionnaires containing both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Conclusion: Based on observations from our survey and review, we concluded that while undergraduate students have a highly positive attitude toward VBD, their rate of pledging is low. The most prominent barrier to this attitude is their experience with cadavers in the dissection hall. Hence, we recommend a revisit of cadaver handling practices and the establishment of appropriate protocols for safe and deferential cadaver handling.
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spelling pubmed-103624062023-07-23 The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends Ganapathy, Arthi Joy, Praisy Rout, Sipra Gaikwad, Manisha Cureus Medical Education Introduction: Voluntary body donation (VBD) programs form the backbone of cadaveric teaching and learning in medical schools. It benefits the medical fraternity the most. Yet, there is a dearth of VBD practice among medical students. We aimed to understand the knowledge and attitude of first-year medical students in a tertiary institute with a systematic review of willingness toward VBD among undergraduate students worldwide. Methods: The first-year medical undergraduates were given a 12-item questionnaire to assess their knowledge and attitude toward VBD. Statistical tests were applied to analyze the difference between the variables. We systematically searched Google Scholar, PubMed, and SCOPUS databases until October 15, 2022. Data concerning knowledge, awareness, and attitude toward VBD among undergraduates of medical backgrounds were extracted and analyzed qualitatively. Results: A total of 82.5% of students returned the completed responses. A significant association was seen between their attitudes toward whole body donation by strangers (p=0.043) and family members (p=0.035). The religion of the participants significantly affected their opinions on VBD and their willingness to pledge themselves (p=0.034). For the review, 20 studies were selected to be analyzed qualitatively. These studies included 4232 undergraduate students globally who were assessed for knowledge, awareness, and attitude toward VBD. Around 50% of the studies were published in India. The first study included was published in 2008. Seven studies were exclusively conducted on medical undergraduates, while the rest consisted of a mixed cohort. The attitude and knowledge of medical undergraduates on VBD were assessed via questionnaires containing both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Conclusion: Based on observations from our survey and review, we concluded that while undergraduate students have a highly positive attitude toward VBD, their rate of pledging is low. The most prominent barrier to this attitude is their experience with cadavers in the dissection hall. Hence, we recommend a revisit of cadaver handling practices and the establishment of appropriate protocols for safe and deferential cadaver handling. Cureus 2023-06-22 /pmc/articles/PMC10362406/ /pubmed/37485180 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.40775 Text en Copyright © 2023, Ganapathy et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Medical Education
Ganapathy, Arthi
Joy, Praisy
Rout, Sipra
Gaikwad, Manisha
The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title_full The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title_fullStr The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title_full_unstemmed The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title_short The Attitude of Medical Students Toward Voluntary Body Donation: A Single Institute Survey and Narrative Review of Global Trends
title_sort attitude of medical students toward voluntary body donation: a single institute survey and narrative review of global trends
topic Medical Education
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10362406/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37485180
http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.40775
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