Attitude, practice and barriers towards voluntary blood donation among health care professionals and non healthcare professionals of Sikkim Manipal University

Donation of blood is of utmost importance in the science of surgical, medicine so it is purely obligatory on the part of every citizen who is not suffering from ill conditions to donate blood. The primary purpose of this study was to explore the attitude, practice and barriers towards voluntary blood donation among health care and non health care professionals of Sikkim Manipal University. The objectives of the study are to: assess the attitude and practice of health care professionals and non-health care professionals towards voluntary blood donation, determine the association between attitude and practice of health care professionals, non-health care professionals and selected demographic variables, determine the co-relation between attitude and practice of voluntary blood donation among health care professionals and non-health care professionals, identify the barriers towards voluntary blood donation among health care professionals and non-health care professionals. A non experimental descriptive survey research design was adopted for this purpose, a total of 200 samples, 100 each from healthcare and non- health care professional were selected from Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, Majhitar and Central Referral Hospital, Tadong, Sikkim respectively by using non-probability convenient sampling technique. The tools consist of structured questionnaire for practice and barriers and 4 points likert scale for attitude which were validated by a total of 5 experts and reliability was ensured. The demographic characteristics for health care professionals were the majority 78% of the sample belonged to the age group of 22-31years, 61% were female , 63% were unmarried, 68% had monthly income below 30000, 94% did not have any chronic illness. In non- health care professionals’ majority 46% belonged to the age group of 22-31years, 70% were male, 64% were married, 70% had monthly income between 31000-60000, 94% did not have any chronic illness. Finding of practice on voluntary blood donation among healthcare professionals showed that the 63% had poor practice whereas among non- healthcare professionals 59% had poor practice. The attitude of health care professionals showed that 50% of the participants had favorable attitude whereas among non-health professionals 56% had favorable attitude.48 healthcare professional were non-donors and 54 of non – health care professional were also a non-donors. The barriers towards voluntary blood donation among non-donors of health care professionals were 35.4% physically unfit, 33.3% did not have adequate knowledge regarding blood donation, 18.7% had fear of becoming weak after blood donation and among non- health care professionals 38.23% mentioned that they were never asked to donate blood, 28.43% were due to lack of time and 27.45% were physically unfit to donate blood.