Blood donation: a comparison between medical students and non-medical students

Abstract

<p class="abstract"><strong>Background:</strong> Voluntary blood donation represents the main source of blood in Sudan. While students are a potential source of blood, this study aim to address the knowledge, attitudes, barriers and motives of both medical and non-medical students in order to recruit them for donating blood to meet the demands of the patients.</p><p class="abstract"><strong>Methods:</strong> A facility based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at Khartoum University between January and March 2019. Structured self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from the participants. The Data were analyzed by the Statistical Package for Social Science software version 23. </p><p class="abstract"><strong>Results:</strong> Of the total 308 students, 75% were medical students and 25% were non-medical. Only 34 (11%) had ever donated blood. 97.1% don’t donate regularly. 79.4% of the donations were voluntary. Males were significantly more donors than females (p value=000). Students had poor knowledge about blood donation requirements but demonstrated better knowledge regarding blood borne diseases. More medical students knew their blood group than non-medical students. Not being asked to be the most reported reason for not donating blood (55.1%). Most of the donors reported that a relative or a friend needs blood was their motivation factor to donate blood (64.7%).</p><strong>Conclusions:</strong>Information about blood donation services and requirements should be available to the students. In addition, campaigns and educational sessions regarding the safety and demands of blood donation is crucial to address the fears and recruit students as eligible source of blood<p class="abstract"> </p>