Organ Procurement in Poland: Legal and Medical Aspects

Abstract

Transplantology is one of the fastest growing specialties of medicine. However, data on actual students' knowledge in this field is lacking.

Aim: Assessing the education of medical students; level of current basic knowledge in the field of medicine, law, and statistics on transplantology in Poland.

Methods: Survey (with 48 questions) conducted among 165 medical students (1st-6th year). The average age was 22 years; 62.0% women.

Results: Only 29.7% of the respondents are blood donors, 36.4% are registered as a potential bone marrow donor, and 11.8% have the donor card. None of these factors had a clear impact on transplantology knowledge. The respondents obtained a result of 54.9% correct answers (medicine, 58.2%; law, 55.8%; statistic, 39.9%). An increase in the level of knowledge in subsequent years of education can be seen. Students in the first year marked 49.4% correct answers compared to people in the sixth year who marked 62.9% correct. Students base their knowledge about transplantation mainly on messages obtained in class (89.1%). The survey showed that 18.8% of respondents consider the family's consent for organ procurement from their deceased member as legally valid; 27.9% do not treat brain death as synonymous with death; and 9.1% believed that organ trafficking is allowed. Nobody is registered in the Central Register of Objections.

Conclusions: Despite the increase in the level of knowledge about transplantation during the study, it does not reach a satisfactory level. The number of sources of knowledge does not correlate with the quality of acquired knowledge.