Assessment of knowledge of diabetes mellitus among bahraini school teachers

Abstract EN

Background: School teachers are potentially effective personnel, who could influence the attitude and behavior of school children via their knowledge.

Within the school they are also considered as the main care givers to these children.

Teachers’ awareness of health problems could play a role in alleviating the child’s suffering from diabetes and its complications.

Objective: To assess the school teachers’ knowledge of the clinical presentation and complication of diabetes mellitus among school children.

Results: The response rate was 89% (n=1140).

One thousand and sixty four teachers (93.3%) responded to the knowledge part of the questionnaire.

The study showed that the school teachers in Bahrain are deficient in diabetic knowledge.

The mean knowledge score was 5.34.

Married teachers, primary school teachers and female teachers had better knowledge than other teachers.

Also, knowledge was related to whether the teachers had an experience with illness, their qualifications or whether they adopt a healthy life style.

Eighty one percent of teachers had a university education, and 19% had completed high school only.

Science teachers had better diabetic knowledge (89.6%) than Arts teachers (83.6%) [P value 0.05 Chi.

Sq.

4.505].

Conclusion: School teachers in Bahrain have inadequate knowledge of the basic facts about diabetes and its treatment, a situation which could have dangerous consequences for the child and complicate its schooling in a number of ways.

Since they are considered to be the first line of children protection in school, they ought to be knowledgeable of common health problems in order to offer their help and support to the students when needed.