Abstract

Background: College students form a large, healthy, and active population of potential blood donors; their recruitment and retention would immensely help meet the demand of safe blood. The knowledge and practice of blood donation among medical and nursing students are reportedly diverse.
Objective: To compare the reasons for blood donation and knowledge and attitude about blood donation among medical and nursing students.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 400 students (300 medical and 100 nursing students) using a semi-structured self-administered questionnaire to solicit information from medical and nursing students over a period of 3 months.
Results: All the 400 students were aware of blood donation but 71.5% (286) had never donated blood. Blood donation rate was slightly increased from first-year to third-year MBBS students, only 12% of nursing students donated blood. Forty-one percent donated blood as a charity and 34.2% had donated as a replacement donors. The most common reason for not donating blood was that it was not asked among 24% students and because of underweight among 17% students. Conclusion: Significant difference exist in the knowledge and practice of blood donation among medical and nursing students which needs to be addressed by creating awareness at the initial stage of higher education by conducting periodic awareness programs.