The determination of the degree of prejudice against obesity felt by students attending medical departments

The Determination of the Degree of Prejudice Against Obesity Felt by Students Attending Medical Departments Aim: This study was conducted to determination of the degree of prejudice against obesity felt by students attending medical departments. Material and Method: The research was carried out as a descriptive research between October 2016 and June 2017. The population consisted of all students (1200) who were studying in the health departments of Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University Faculty of Health and Health Services Vocational School in the 2016-2017 academic year. The sampling method was not applied, as the population composed of 729 students who voluntarily accepted to participate in the study. A questionnaire and GAMS-27 Obesity Prejudice Scale were used as data collection tools. The approval of ethics committee and institutional permissions were obtained before conducting the research. Number, percentage, Cronbach α, Kruskall Wallis, Mann Whitney-U, Spearman's rank of correlation and Shapiro-Wilk Test were utilized to evaluate the data. Results: The average of obesity prejudice scale of the students was 75.54±10.43, thus they tend to prejudge.The average score of the students who declare they have no prejudice towards obese individuals is higher (=75.91±10.07) than the average score of the students who declare that they are prejudiced (=73.60±12.03). It was determined that the students who define themselves as obese and who are obese according to Body Mass Index classification had the highest average score (=76.49±11.02). A statistically significant difference was found between the obesity prejudice scale of the students and only the sex of the students, among all the social and demographic characteristics (p<0.05). Conclusion: According to the results of the study, when the effects of the obesity prejudice of health education students on health services are considered, the necessity of educational interventions was revealed to reduce obesity prejudice. Key Words: Healthcare, nurse, obesity, obesity prejudice.