ABSTRACT

Study was undertaken in order to determine knowledge and behaviors of the teachers teaching at 4 primary schools in Akşehir about epilepsy and to suggest practicable recommendations in line with the results obtained.

It was a descriptive study and in the study, all of the teachers were tried to be reached between the 1 st of October and the 30 th of November 2010. The questionnaire form was designed according to the literature information.

It was found out that mean age of the teachers was 38.4 (24-56), 53.2% of them were male. It was seen that 65.4% of the teachers had a teaching career of ≥13 years. It was detected that 17.7% met epilepsy once, 7.3% intervened for epilepsy once and 4% had students with epilepsy. 47.6% of the teachers were of the opinion that epilepsy was not a genetic-disease, 43.5% thought that epilepsy lasted life long and 45.2% said that jaws of the epilepsy patient should be opened during epileptic seizures.

It was seen that teachers generally lacked knowledge about epilepsy, school-age children with epilepsy and actions to be done during epileptic seizures. In this sense,a multidisciplinary approach is needed in order to improve the relation between the parents of the epileptic children and the school and to increase knowledge level of the parents, teachers and the society about epilepsy.

Keywords: Knowledge level, epilepsy, school-age children, teacher