Avaliação do conhecimento dos professores de Ensino Infantil e Ensino Fundamental I de Aracaju sobre a epilepsia

Abstract

Epilepsy is one of the most frequent childhood neurologic disorders that is surrounded by myths and social stigma, therefore putting children with epilepsy at higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depression, than children living without this disease. In the school environment the teacher plays a fundamental role for the inclusion of children with epilepsy by mediating and encouraging the development of relationships with other students, as well as recognizing and managing epileptic seizures. To do so, these professionals need to be educated on the disorder. This is a cross-sectional study conducted on teachers from public and private schools at Aracaju, Sergipe which aims to evaluate the knowledge about epilepsy among primary school teachers in this city. As evaluation tool, the questionnaire developed by Fernandes and Souza (2004) was employed. Upon receiving the filled out questionnaires we handed out pamphlets containing important information regarding epilepsy to the teachers. Out of 92 teachers whose knowledge was evaluated 95,65% believed that children with epilepsy should attend regular school and 80,43% % stated that children with this condition were able to keep up with school work with the same ease as the other children. 84,78% teachers believed that epilepsy was treated with medication and 77,17% with medical follow up; 29,35% believed that the children could swallow their tongue during the tonic-clonic seizure and 36,96% teachers said they would attempt to unwind the child's tongue in the event of a seizure.The teachers of Aracaju demonstrated satisfactory knowledge about educational activities of children with epilepsy, nevertheless, there is a deficit amongst theses professionals regarding the management of tonic- clonic seizures, and there is a high prevalence of the myth that a child could swallow the tongue during a seizure. New studies must be conducted to analyze the impact of the informative pamphlets on the knowledge of the teachers of Aracaju.