Determination of HEALTH professionals' attitudes and approaches to genetics and genetic applications

Aim: This study was conducted to determine the attitudes and understandings of health professionals towards genetics and genetic practices. Method: The research was conducted as descriptive and cross-sectional. This research was conducted with 350 healthcare professionals working in a university hospital in Turkey. In the study, data were collected by using the descriptive features form and the Attitude and Understanding Scale towards Genetics and Genetic Practices. Student's t test and Anova test were used to evaluate the data. Results: In this study, it was determined that 54.90% of the participants were women, 79.70% were between the ages of 18-30, 51.43% were single, and 17.70% were working in the administrative unit. Again, it was found that 33.10% of the participants were midwives/nurses by profession, 49.40% of them were at the associate degree/undergraduate level, 50.00% of them worked for 5-10 years and 61.70% of them did not receive training on genetics and genetic applications. It was determined that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the Attitude and Understanding Scale towards Genetics and Genetic Practices of health professionals and gender, age, marital status, education level, unit of work, profession and education on genetics (p<0.05). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, it was found that the attitudes and understanding levels of health professionals towards genetic practices were at a moderate level and there was a statistically significant relationship with gender, age, marital status, education level, unit of work, profession and education on genetics.