Purpose: It is well known that personal decision making in respect to organ donation is highly dependent on the balance of knowledge, trust, and fear. We wanted to explore the attitude of German medical students towards organ donation and investigate the relationship between knowledge, trust, and fear in this special subgroup.
Methods: We conducted an online survey utilizing (1) the snowball effect of using Facebook groups and advertisement as well as (2) mailing lists of medical faculties in Germany for distribution.
Results: We surveyed 1370 medical students. 75.8 % (N = 988) of the participants stated to carry an organ donor card and allowed their organs to be donated. 1.8 % (N = 23) refused donation. 22.5 % (N = 293) did not carry an organ donor card. Analysis of the "decided" versus the "undecided" group revealed substantial differences regarding transplantation knowledge (mean knowledge score of 4.23 vs. 3.81; P < 0.001), trust in (mean trust score 4.11 vs. 3.39; P < 0.001), and fear of (mean fear score 1.63 vs. 2.22; P < 0.001) organ donation. 45.9 % of the undecided group (N = 134) opted for accessing additional information material. After reading the info material, 22.7 % (N = 29) stated their willingness to sign a donor card, whereas 76.6 % (N = 98) still could not reach a decision.
Conclusions: The willingness to potentially act as organ donor was related to the pre-existent knowledge, trust, and fear. Access to information material did promote the decision towards organ donation in a group of previously undecided medical students. This advocates initiating information campaigns even in population groups with strong medical background.
Keywords: Fear; Germany; Knowledge; Medical students; Organ donation; Trust.