Factors Influencing the Willingness of Allied Health Students to Donate Organs or Tissues S.H. Elsafi*, M.M. Al-Adwani, K.M. Al-Jubran, M.M. Abu Hassan, and E.M. Al Zahrani Clinical Laboratory Science Department, Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT Background. There has been an increase in the number of patients waiting for organ transplantation. Methods. A questionnaire on knowledge and attitude toward organ donation was completed by 434 allied health students. Results. Overall knowledge about the various aspects of organ donation was adequate and was higher among women and clinical students. Although the majority were willing to be living donors for their families, very few students supported deceased organ donation, and even fewer of them had thought about an organ donation card. Despite the good knowledge, an overall positive attitude toward deceased donation was held by only 44% of the students. In contrast, the attitude toward directed living organ donation to family members was favorable in 83.1% of the respondents, which seems to be influenced by cultural and sociodemographic factors. Our findings indicate that the most frequent cause of refusal to donate organs among students with negative attitudes was the mistrust of medical staff regarding brain death diagnosis (49.9%), followed by bodily concerns (18.1%) and religion (9.9%). Quite a few of our respondents supported commercial donation, which was attributed to the less knowledgeable groups. Respondents who were willing to donate organs indicated that the reason was for helping others and sympathy. This study identified that the main source of information about organ donation for the respondents was tele- vision, followed by relatives/friends and the internet. Conclusions. The misconception of the students toward deceased donation needs to be improved by integrating the concepts of brain death within the curriculum of allied health students. S OLID organ transplantation is an integral part of modern health care. Donated organs transplanted from deceased or living individuals provide a way of giving the gift of life to patients with irreversible end-stage organ failure. However, while the number of organ donations has not significantly increased, there has been an increase in the number of patients waiting for organ or tissue trans- plantation, not only in Saudi Arabia [1] but also worldwide [2]. The severe shortage of donated organs has raised many ethical, moral, and societal issues regarding the supply and use of living and cadaveric donations. It has also led to the practice of organ trafficking for financial gain in some parts of the world at the expense of the poor [3]. The shortage of organ and tissue donors has been widely studied, and several factors explaining why individuals accept or refuse to consent to organ and tissue donation are reported in the literature [4]. Research indicates that the high refusal rate of consent can be lowered by the involve- ment of competent health workers knowledgeable in organ donations [5]. Based on statistics reported by the International Registry for Organ Donation and Transplantation, the percentage of people in Saudi Arabia who donated their organs after *Address correspondence to Salah Hassan Elsafi, Clinical Laboratory Science Department, Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, PO Box 946, Dhahran 31932, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: salah@psmchs.edu.sa ª 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 230 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10169 0041-1345/17 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2017.03.085 Transplantation Proceedings, 49, 1215e1220 (2017) 1215