To determine the level of knowledge of the nurse and midwives about the phenylketonuria who are implementing the screening program of phenylketonuria in the province centre Aydın

SUMMARYTo determine the level of knowledge of the nurse and midwives about thephenylketonuria who are implementing the screening program ofphenylketonuria in the province centre AydınIn our country nurses and midwives are taking an active participation on theimplemention of the screening program of phenylketonuria. As the treatment of thephenylketonuria illness is possible during the early diagnosis, which is known by thenurse and midwives, underline the importance of the screening program to be doneregularly, save and effectively.In this study the aim was to determine the knowledge level of the nurses andmidwives about the phenylketonuria who are implementing a screening programabout phenylketonuria in the province centre Aydın.This cross section type of survey, has been done between the dates of 01march 2006-31 may 2006 after all the necessary permits have been taken from Aydınprovince health department. In this survey the aim was to reach all of the nurses andmidwives who are implementing a screening program about the phenylketonuria, invillage clinics, birth and child care home and state hospital. The data of this surveyhas been gathered by face to face interview with 42 questions inquiry form.While evaluating the data, 20 question has been accepted as the generalknowledge of the phenylketonuria and each question has been valued 5 points andevaluated out of 100 points. Furthermore the selected 20 question in survey has beendivided into two among them selfs as phenylketonuria illness and phenylketonuriascreening. For each questions related to phenylketonuria illness have been 5 pointsand for each questions related to phenylketonuria screening also 5 points has beenevaluated out of 50 points. The averages has been given as average±standartdeviation. While analyzing the datas statistical Mann Whitney U and chi-square testhas been used. P<0,05 significance level has been taken.182 (%86,26) nurse and midwives out of 211 who are working in thephenylketonuria screening units have joined on the basis of voluntary to our survey.Participants age average is 35,1±5,9, average time worked on job is 15,7±5,8 andphenylketonuria screening task time 8,2±3,7 has been calculated in years. It has beenseen that %35,7 of the nurse and midwives has been trained about the subject with inthe in-service training and %33,5 source of their knowledge about thephenylketonuria cames from the source of the ministry magazine, brochure and %5,5of them have been nursing a phenylketonuria baby/child before.At the end of the statistical analysis, it has been determined a generalknowledge average point out of 100 points 57,3±15,2 regarding the knowledge aboutthe phenylketonuria subject of the nurses and midwives. Relating to the general pointaverage of the phenylketonuria subject it has not been found any satisticalrelationship with age, marital status, job, time spend on job, the working period onsame institution, phenylketonuria screening period of time andnursing/training/consultancy (P>0,05). Institution, level of training and taking in-service training, also the general average of knowledge point about the subjectphenylketonuria has been found meaningful on the statistical point of view (P<0,05).We believe that it will help in order to increase the offered health servicequality, especially to give importance to the in-service training and repeating thistrainings in certain period of times and mentioning the importance of the subjectabout the phenylketonuria illness and screening subject should be done.Key words: Aydın, Level of knowledge, Midwives, Phenylketonuria, Nurses