Assessing the Efficacy of a Peer Education Model in Teaching Breast Self-Examination to University Students

This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer education model in teaching breast selfexaminationto a late adolescence female student group attending the second class of Buca Educational Facultyof Dokuz Eylül University (DEU). A total of 15 volunteer students were given the breast self-examination trainingprogramme by a researcher and thereby became qualified as peer educators. Each then reached 10 peers andconveyed information on the Breast-Self Examination Programme. The identification forms of the studentswere filled out by the researcher. Evaluation forms I and II developed by Maurer (1997) for regular BSE practiceand skills were used and evaluated with 100 points. The “paired t-test”, “Student’s t-test”, “McNemar test”,and “Pearson correlation test” were employed to for statistical assessment. According to the evaluation results;while the students’s avarage point of knowledge on BSE was 43.0 ± 11.7 before training, it became 88.9 ± 8.15after a week, and 86.9 ± 9.69 after four weeks. It was obvious that there was a meaningful difference betweenthose knowledge rates (p<0,05). Similarly while the ratio of systematic practice of BSE among students was2.6% before training it increased to 66% (p<0.05). Additionally, the average point of the students BSE practiceskills became 91.5 ± 7.25 at four weeks after the training with a significant increase as well (r=0,70). Thereforewe conclude that the peer education model is an effective method for teaching breast self examination to students.