Teachers' knowledge about epilepsy

Background and Purpose: Epilepsy is a disease frequently seen among school children. Teachers may be distressed by children having seizures as they do not receive specific training about this condition during their education. Moreover, teachers can feel overwhelmed if they do not know how to handle the situation. After cerebral apoplexy, epilepsy is the second most common central nervous system disorder and the death rate is two to three times higher in children who have epilepsy than in those who do not. This research was conducted to determine teacher’s knowledge level about epilepsy.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, elementary schools in 10 urban areas of Birjand City, Iran, were included and a cluster of 20 schools was selected. In order to evaluate the teachers’ knowledge of epilepsy, we used a survey consisting of five demographic information questions, five questions concerning familiarity with the disease, and 22 questions about their knowledge of the condition. The survey was prepared by the researcher and its content validity was confirmed by 10 experts, in addition test-retest validity was verified. Then the responses were gathered and analyzed using SPSS software.
Results: According to this research findings, the average level of teachers’ knowledge was 13.9 out of 22. Overall, 70.9% of the teachers obtained an average level of 17.7% as a good level and 11.4% as a weak level of knowledge.
Conclusion: This research showed that the majority of teachers had an average level of understanding of epilepsy. Therefore, according to the above results, teachers would benefit from having further education about this condition during their service as this would assist them to develop their level of knowledge and help them to support such children more effectively.