ESPE Abstracts

Introdaction: The prevalence of Diabetes type 1 constantly increases worldwide from birth to 12 years with a peak in school age. The appearance of students with diabetes in class may be a challenge for their teachers. Diabetic children spend routinely most of their daytime at school and may need adult support in insulin injections or at episodes of hypo and hyperglycemia during school activities and meals. Therefore, our study aims to evaluate the knowledge and awareness of diabetic signs and symptoms in children, features of acute hypo or hyperglycemia, and first aid in diabetic students among school workers.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted in the Ternopil region, Ukraine. The study enrolled 100 randomly chosen school workers (50 teachers and 50 people of medical staff). A structured self-administered online multiple-choice questionnaire developed by the researchers was used. The quiz includes 26 questions about Diabetes in general (13 items), typical diabetic symptoms (6 items), and basic supportive aid at hypo or hyperglycemia (7 items) with 1 grade for each correct answer. There were 23 questions with one correct answer and three items with open answers. The evaluation of the quiz was done by the method of summed score. The final score of the questionnaire ranges from 0 to 23. The survey was approved by the ethics committee of I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University.

Results: The range of teacher’s correct answers was from eight to 22 grades, while in medical staff in between 14 and 22. In total, the number of correct answers in 50 teachers was 809 (70.3%), while in 50 nurses 964 (83.8%) from the maximum possible 1150. The 28 teachers (56%) answered correctly to more than 70% of items, but medical staff replied correctly more often 43 (86%) (P <0.05). Only 30% of teachers and 64% of the medical staff realized that multiple insulin injections are the basic treatment of diabetes type 1 in children (P <0.05). 44% of teachers and 64% of medical staff agreed hypoglycemia might appeared suddenly due to stress or physical training. Unexpectedly, 46% of teachers and 50% of nurses did not realize that the bed feeling of diabetic children needs urgent glucose measurement. However, 92% of teachers and 100% of medical staff are sure, that “hypoglycemia may cause unconsciousness”, “diabetes is an incurable disease” (94% and 98% respectively), and “diabetes is not contagious disease” (100% of respondents).

Conclusion: So, our study revealed the importance of updating training programs for school workers to improve awareness of diabetic adverse events in students.