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 self-examination to a late adolescence female student group attending the second class of Buca Educational Faculty of Dokuz Eylül University (DEU). A total of 15 volunteer students were given the breast self-examination training programme by a researcher and thereby became qualified as peer educators. Each then reached 10 peers and conveyed information on the Breast-Self Examination Programme. The identification forms of the students were filled out by the researcher. Evaluation forms I and II developed by Maurer (1997) for regular BSE practice and 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 average point of knowledge on BSE was 43.0 +/- 11.7 before training, it became 88.9 +/- 8.15 after a week, and 86.9 +/- 9.69 after four weeks. It was obvious that there was a meaningful difference between those knowledge rates (p<0,05). Similarly while the ratio of systematic practice of BSE among students was 2.6% before training it increased to 66% (p<0.05). Additionally, the average point of the students BSE practice skills became 91.5 +/- 7.25 at four weeks after the training with a significant increase as well (r=0,70). Therefore we conclude that the peer education model is an effective method for teaching breast self examination to students.