Examination of Adiyaman Health school students' level F awareness about the harmful effects of radiation

Currently, the harmful effects of radiation, which is an important public health problem is not known very well by the community. For the health workforces, it is important to be able to protect the people who were served, to take necessary measures during service delivery, and to provide informative training about the harmful effects of radiation. The purpose of the study is to examine School of Health nursing and midwifery education students' level of awareness about the harmful effects of radiation in Adiyaman University. In this research, a descriptive cross-sectional study with total of 583 nursing and midwifery education students studying 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade were conducted during 2014-2015 academic year in the School of Health, Adiyaman University. Access rate to the study population were found 85,2%. Participants of the study were 81% female (472) and 19% male (111) students. In order to collect research data a "personal information form" which was include socio-demographics variables and "radiation attitude scale" with reliability 0.88 were used. Analyze of the data were done by using a statistic program. Analyze of the data indicated that nursing students' awareness was found higher than midwives students (p=,000), first class students' awareness about the harmful effect of radiation were found to be higher than other classes (p=,000). According to the parents' education level, students whose mother with primary school degree found significantly higher radiation awareness compared to other education levels (p=,030). Students' fathers with graduate degree indicated low level of radiation awareness compared to the students' fathers with other education levels (p=,000). Participants overall mean score from the "radiation attitude scale" were found that the students' overall awareness about harmful effects of radiation not adequate. In order to increase the health school students' awareness about harmful effects of radiation, nursing and midwifery training program course content related to radiation damage and protection need to be updated. Key words: Nursing students, midwifery students, radiation, awareness, education