To understand the research aims, research results, obstacle factors and solutions of medical students′ willingness to organ donation in developed countries.

The literatures were reviewed systematically in the following databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid - EMBASE: Excerpta Medica, EBSCOhost Complete and Cochrane Library. In order to ensure the comprehensibility of the reviewed literatures, there was an additional search of grey literatures in the following databases: York Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, Open Grey, ProQuest Dissertation and Theses, Mednar. The search strategy was developed based on keywords and subject heading words so that the searching process could be systematic and comprehensive. Arksey and O′Malley′s framework was used to integrate the literature in this scoping review.

A total of 17 records were included. Three major themes were emerged from the review. Firstly, the background of the research on the willingness of medical students to organ donation in developed countries was mainly based on the fact that medical students had an important impact on public organ donation in the future. Secondly, the results showed that most of the medical students had positive willingness to organ donation and different subgroups may have different results. Thirdly, the main obstacle of medical students to organ donation was the lack of the relevant knowledge while the solution was the systematic, structured and valuable educational courses.

The willingness of medical students to organ donation in developed countries has been in the ascendant since the 21st century. Some problems could be revealed through different research methods, from which we could also find the development direction in the future. So we could benefit from this kind of scoping reviews.