Knowledge and practice of school teachers on health Care of school children

Abstract

Health services are depending on needs and preference of the community in India. Many schools in Tamilnadu do not have school health nurse in campus; teachers need to play major role in health aspect of the school children. Cross-sectional study was undertaken with the objective of assessing the knowledge and practice of school teachers towards health of school children. Cross-sectional survey conducted among school teachers in Chennai, Thiruvellore and Kancheepuram.  Structured questionnaire was used and 900 teachers were randomly selected from schools and assessed on their knowledge and practice regarding health of children.  Among them 346 were male and 554 were female. The SPSS package was used to analyze the data.Totally 78% of the teachers were not having adequate knowledge and 89% were not having the practice of maintaining health care of school children. The chi square test showing that there was statistically significant association between the school teacher’s knowledge with the education (P=<0.05) and year of teaching experience (P=<0.001).