Publication: Knowledge and Attitude on Eye Donation among Undergraduate Medical Students of Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences, Nepal
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Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kathmandu University
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Background
Corneal blindness accounts for a significant proportion of avoidable visual impairment
in developing countries. Eye donation is voluntary and awareness in undergraduate
medical students being a future practitioner in any field are expected to be linked to
patients during death in hospitals.
Objective
To assess the awareness of medical students on eye donation at Kathmandu
University School of Medical Sciences (KUSMS).
Method
This was a cross-sectional study conducted among undergraduate medical students
of KUSMS. Students’ responses were recorded using a predesigned, pretested, semi-
structured questionnaire inquiring knowledge and attitude of eye donation, sources
of information, their willingness to donate eyes as well as the reasons for donating/
not donating eyes.
Result
Less than half of the medical students (45.6%) were aware of eye donation only after
death. Newspapers (72.2%) were the major source of information. The final year
medical students were more aware (Average knowledge score = 11.56 ± 2.05) than
their juniors. 80.7% of the students were willing to donate their eyes. The adjudged
reasons for willingness to donate were that eye donation is a noble work and pleasure
in helping a blind person while the reasons for unwillingness to donate were lack of
awareness followed by family objection to eye donation.
Conclusion
Future medical practitioners possessed satisfactory knowledge about eye donation.
Educating this cadre of human resources to sensitize them towards the need for
eye donation would be a crucial step towards reducing the global burden of corneal
blindness.
KEY WORDS
Attitude, Eye donation, Knowledge, Medical students, Transplantation
Description
Kaiti R,1 Dhungel P,2 Pradhan A,3 Chaudhry M4
1Department of Ophthalmology
Nepal Eye Hospital,
Tripureshwor, Kathmandu.
2Pacific University, College of Optometry
3Queensland University of Technology (QUT),
Brisbane, QLD 4059, Australia.
4Department of Optometry and Vision Science,
Ansal University, Haryana.
Keywords
Attitude, Eye donation, Knowledge, Medical students, Transplantation