Educational Program for School Health Nurses and Teachers Regarding Primary School Children with Epilepsy

Mayada Taha Mahmoud Sabea,Eman Hassan Mohammed

doi:10.12691/ajnr-6-5-6

Abstract

Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain that causes recurrent seizures. Effects people at all ages, but with higher rates at primary school age. Children with epilepsy face several social, cultural and learning problems, so that school health nurses and teachers have essential role to decrease these problems. Aim: Evaluate the educational program for school health nurses and teachers regarding primary school children with epilepsy. Design: A quasi experimental design was adopted. Setting: Governmental primary schools in Sammanoud City, Gharbia Governorate, Egypt. Sampling: Two samples were used: For school health nurses, all of them participated in the study, these were 21 school health nurses, and for teachers; simple random sample was used to select 249 teachers, with the following criteria: Direct contact with students in the class or during providing activities. Tools: An interviewing questionnaire which includes 4 parts, 1) Demographic characteristics, 2) School health nurses and teachers' knowledge about meaning of epilepsy, 3) School health nurses and teachers' attitude toward primary school children suffering from epilepsy, and 4) School health nurses and teachers' practice toward primary school children with epilepsy. Results: This study showed, highly statistically significant improvement of school health nurses and teachers' knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding epilepsy (4.23±1.23 to 5.14±1.08 and 1.49±1.07 to 4.57±1.46,) (6.91±1.60 to 10.68±2.06and 2.59±2.32to 9.26±2.21) (2.27±2.55 to 3.18±2.46 and 0.78±1.79 to 3.27±2.38) respectively post educational program implementation. Conclusion: Educational program improved the school health nurses and teachers' knowledge, attitude and practices regarding primary school children with epilepsy. The study results also showed a highly statistically significant and positive correlation between knowledge, attitude and practices of studied samples after educational program implementation. Recommendation: Dissemination of the educational program for school health nurses and teachers at all governmental and nongovernmental schools; Clarified booklet should be provided to school health nurses and teachers to deal them how to deal with children suffering from epilepsy; Training the school health nurses before work to determine how apply educational program for teachers to determine how to deal with children suffering from epilepsy during and after seizure.

Highlights

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder affecting people of all races, communities, ages, and genders, higher commonness during primary school age
Primary school children suffering from epilepsy are often complaining from several psychological, social and learning problems because the persons around them do not know how to deals with them, that lead to negatively affecting on the children lives
The present study showed that significant correlations were detected between total score knowledge and practice among school health nurses and teachers (0.001 and 0.035 respectively), while there were insignificant correlations between total practice score and total attitude score among the studied subjects regarding epilepsy post educational program

Summary

Introduction

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder affecting people of all races, communities, ages, and genders, higher commonness during primary school age. This age is a critical period because it is characterized by building the child’s social, psychological, and physical life. The school period will significantly impact on the child’s quality of life at all stages of child's life [1]. The brain is responsible for all minds and body functions so that the seizures can happen at any part of the brain this is shown on the client during the epileptic fit. Over 40 different types of seizures, the one person may have more than one type. Seizures are caused by malfunction of the brain’s electrical system. It can occur with a wide variety of conditions involving the central nervous system [2]

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