The effect of breast self-examination (Bse) education given to midwifery students on their knowledge and attitudes

Abstract

This study was conducted in a descriptive and half-experimental format in order to determine the effect of breast self-examination (BSE) education given to 103 midwifery students from Halic University Sciences of Health School Midwifery Department on their knowledge and attitudes. After legal permission was obtained from the institution and verbal participation consent from the students, data were obtained using demographic and knowledge surveys, applied twice before and after education by the researcher between May-June 2010 and evaluated with proportional calculations, Kruskal Wallis test, t-test and t-test for dependent groups. Mean age of the students is 20.2±1.52; 58.3% had no information about BSE and 73.8% were not doing BSE; 7.7% them stated that they had a family member with breast cancer. The knowledge level score was 43.2±10.6 before and 68.4±10.5 after the BSE education (p<0.05). A statistically significant difference persisted between the pre- and post-education scores taking knowledge, making BSE, and frequency of using BSE average scores of the students (p<0.05).