Knowledge and Intentions of Nursing-school Students from Bjelovar and Pakrac regarding Breastfeeding

Sa？etak The subject of this paper was to analyze the knowledge and intentions of students of two different secondary nursing schools regarding breastfeeding. The respondents were 135 students between 17 and 19 years of age (30 male and 105 female students). 50 respondents are from Pakrac and the others from Bjelovar. A questionnaire method was used to find out about the students’ intentions and knowledge regarding breastfeeding in general. The questionnaire included several sociodemographic questions, 8 questions related to their intentions to breastfeed, and 15 questions related to their knowledge about breastfeeding. The Mann-Whitney test and the chi-squared test were used to compare the differences in the results. The students of the Secondary school in Pakrac had poorer results in questions related to their intentions to breastfeed in public places (p=0.04), but significantly better results regarding their intentions to breastfeed their children after their first year (p=0.01). Considering the breastfeeding knowledge questions, the students from Bjelovar showed better knowledge about concentration of iron in mother’s milk (p=0.027), but poorer knowledge considering breastfeeding on demand (p=0.002), exclusive breastfeeding (p=0.000), the need to start an education on breastfeeding before pregnancy (p=0.007), and the need to add formula milk to mother’s milk (p=0.037). The results of the study confirmed that students of the two secondary nursing schools have significantly different answers both in questions that concern breastfeeding knowledge and in questions related to intentions regarding breastfeeding