Knowledge and attitudes towards stem cells and the significance of their medical application among healthcare sciences students of Jouf University

Abdulrahman Almaeen; Farooq Ahmed Wani; Ashokkumar Thirunavukkarasu

doi:10.7717/peerj.10661

Knowledge and attitudes towards stem cells and the significance of their medical application among healthcare sciences students of Jouf University

PeerJ. 2021 Jan 19:9:e10661. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10661. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Abdulrahman Almaeen¹, Farooq Ahmed Wani¹, Ashokkumar Thirunavukkarasu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Jouf University, Sakaka, Aljouf, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, Jouf University, Sakaka, Aljouf, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Background: Adequate knowledge and positive attitude of the medical and dental students towards the stem cells and their utilization in medical science is extremely important keeping in view the ever-increasing potential of stem cells in the medical field. The present study was planned to assess the knowledge and attitude of the medical and dental students towards stem cells and their applications in medical science.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 217 medical and dental college students of the Jouf University. The systematic random sampling method was used to select students based on gender and year of study. After obtaining written informed consent, a self-administered questionnaire consisting of three parts was administered to the students. The first part collected the socio-demographic details; part 2 contains 15 questions regarding knowledge and part 3 contains 10 questions regarding attitude towards stem cells.

Results: Majority of the participants were males (54.4%) in the age group of 21-22 years. Awareness regarding Saudi stem cell donor registry was observed in 50.7% of the students . A total of 72.4% of the students possessed medium knowledge while 70% of the students possessed high attitude score towards stem cell research and its medical significance. A significant relationship was observed between the Saudi Stem Cell Donor Registry awareness and knowledge score with p-value of 0.04. Relationship between the knowledge and attitude scores was significant with p-value of 0.001 and with a Pearson correlation score of r = 0.334.

Conclusion: Medium to high level of knowledge was noted among majority of the participants and a high attitude score was also noted towards stem cells and their relevance. A significant positive correlation was observed between the knowledge and attitude scores. It is recommended to include various interventional educational programs for the medical and dental students on the significance of stem cells in the medical field.

Keywords: Attitude; Awareness; Correlation; Knowledge; Medical; Stem cells.

Grants and funding

The authors received no funding for this work.