Purpose: Cognizant and well aware medical and nursing students are expected to influence and positively mold the eye donation rates in India. Keeping this in view, this study was designed to assess and compare eye donation awareness among medical and nursing students.
Methods: A cross-sectional and comparative study undertaken on the occasion of eye donation fortnight among 112 medical and 115 nursing students. A pretested semi-structured questionnaire on eye donation was given to each student after getting informed consent. The software used for analysis of data was SPSS version 22.0.
Results: All the medical students and 91.3% of nursing students (P < 0.0016) had heard about eye donation. Eye donation fortnight is celebrated every year to create awareness was known to 42% of medical students and 29.5% of nursing students (P < 0.05). Television, newspaper, magazines, and posters were found to be important sources of information in both groups. Eye donation can give vision to the blind was the primary motivational force both among medical and nursing students (P < 0.001). The ideal time of eye donation is within 6 h of death was known to 69% of medical students and 60.9% nursing students. Lack of awareness and objection of family members are the two significant perceived responses to non-donation in both groups. 88.4% of medical students and 79.1% of nursing students are willing to donate their eyes in future.
Conclusion: The awareness of eye donation among medical students is better than nursing students. However, the willingness to pledge their eyes is almost equal in both groups.
Keywords: Eye donation; medical students; nursing students.