Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Among the Medical And Dental Undergraduates Regarding On Whole Body Donation For Teaching Learning Purposes: A Perspectives From Bioethics- A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Cadaveric dissection provides as for student to learn the detailed structure of human anatomy; thus, body donation program is pertinent in ensuring the continuation of dissection class.The objectives of this study were to assess the student knowledge, attitude, practice on body donation and to validate the questionnaire that assesses knowledge, attitude and practice during dissection.Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted on 264 undergraduates medical and dental students in B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Nepal, who had attended regular dissection classes for one year.Ethical approval was obtained from Institutional Review Committee-IRC/1455/018.A non-probability purposive sampling technique was applied to sample the study subjects.A questionnaire consisting of 32 items was distributed to the students on day-1 and day-15 of intervention and the data was analyzed using Paired 't' test.A bivariate correlation was done for intra class correlation of each domain and Cronbach's alpha was calculated for each domain.Results: Religion, lack of awareness program, insecurity of being mishandled were found to be main barriers which discouraged for body donation in future.98 % student claimed that the dissected body needs to be handled respectfully to maintain the dignity of person after death.Attitude and practice were positively correlated (r= 0.17, p<0.01).Factors affecting practice and attitude were significant (p<0.05) and positively correlated (r=0.814).There was significant relation between knowledge, attitude and practice (p =0.018, 0.004, 0.000) at 95 % C.I.The intra class correlation scores of each domain during test and retest were 0.83, 0.72, 0.60 and correlated significantly (p<0.05).The questionnaire designed was reliable for knowledge, attitude, practice domain with Cronbach's alpha of 0.68, 0.70, and 0.60 respectively.Conclusion: Overall knowledge, attitude and practice on body donation was acceptable among the students involved in this study.A validated questionnaire was developed which can be used to collect the opinion on whole body donation for academic purposes.