Background: Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders among patients, with a high prevalence in adults and children in Saudi Arabia. It can have a negative impact on a child's health, behavior, and academic performance, as well as their mental health. As a seizure attack can happen in school and the teachers will be the first health providers, preventing complications and ensuring student performance, development of social skills, and future employment can be significantly impacted by a teacher's awareness and attitudes towards epilepsy.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia, targeting teachers in schools of all educational levels using a self-administrated validated questionnaire in Arabic. A total of 423 teachers fulfilling the inclusion criteria were included. Teachers' ages ranged from 18 to more than 50 years with mean age of 42.6 ± 9.3 years old. Exactly 261 (61.7%) teachers were females and 400 (94.6%) were Saudi.
Results: We defined acceptable level of awareness as the ability to recognize seizure phenomena (if they have witnessed one before) as a medical neurological problem (as opposed to attributing it to religious and/or superstitious beliefs, etc.) with ability to respond promptly with proper first aid required when encountering a seizure (turn on one side, avoid placing items in mouth, etc). Exactly 163 (38.5%) had good overall knowledge level while 260 (61.5%) had poor knowledge regarding epilepsy.
Conclusion: Our research found that teachers have poor knowledge about epilepsy, wherein 38.5% had good overall knowledge level while 61.5% had poor knowledge regarding epilepsy. However, only a 9.2% had first-aid training, which suggests that knowledge and practice of epilepsy first aid needs to be improved via public awareness campaigns and first-aid training courses in schools.
Keywords: awareness; eastern province; epilepsy; saudi arabia; teachers.
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