Date
8-6-2025
Department
School of Health Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc)
Chair
John C. Suchland
Keywords
organ donation, education, post-pre survey, medical students
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences | Public Health
Recommended Citation
Rigsby, Matilin G., "Changing Hearts and Minds: Educating Medical Students to Transform Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Organ Donation" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7300.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7300
Abstract
The national organ shortage is exacerbated by physicians who, contrary to federal mandates, do not refer patients with organ donation potential in a timely fashion. Whereas United States medical school curricula widely omit organ donation-related topics, literature demonstrates that educating future physicians significantly improves those students’ ability to understand and positively perceive donation, influencing their willingness to refer donor candidates. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine if an educational module among fourth-year medical students at Texas A&M University College of Medicine Dallas Campus affects those students’ perceived knowledge and attitudes toward organ donation. The researcher administered a pilot quasi-experimental post-pre survey combining the Organ-Tissue Donation and Transplantation Knowledge Scale (ODTKS) and Organ Donation Attitude Scale (ODAS) with supplemental survey questions. Forty-one students completed this survey after watching a 30-minute lecture about organ donation. The researcher applied a paired samples t test to the normally distributed sections (ODTKS and supplemental questions) and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to the non-normally distributed section (ODAS). She found that the mean ODTKS score improved 5% [t(40) = 3.59, p<.001], and the mean supplemental questions score improved 10% [t(40) = 6.04, p<.001]. The median ODAS score increased .10 points [W(40) = 4.24, p<.001] on a 5-point Likert scale. Additionally, the researcher found that the ODAS demonstrated acceptable reliability on the pre- and posttest, achieving Cronbach’s alpha scores of .77 and .75, respectively. These promising early results demonstrate a need to amend the surveys for reliability and retest the intervention in a multicenter study.
