Iran Journal of Nursing

  This is a field study, done with the purpose of detecting awareness rate of midwifery students about the prenatal, intrapartal, post partal care of women suffering from AIDS in the nursing and midwifery faculties in medical university science ministry of heath and medical teaching in Tehran city (Iran, 1993).

  In this research multi stage random sampling method was used, and 124 of third and fourth year continuous B.S midwifery students were selected who stydied in the medical science universities of Tehran, Shahid Beheshti and Iran.

  According to the specific objectives a questionnaire containing four questions about demographic characteristics , ten questions about awareness rate of prenatal care, nine questions about awareness rate of intrapartal care and eight questions about awareness rate of post partal care of the women suffering from AIDS was made.

  The results of this research were illustrated in 49 tables and in order to reach awareness rate of students descriptive and inferential statistics were used. The overall findings revealed, that the research unit's awareness rate in most cases (78.2%) were average and in least of cases (21.8%) were low in relation to the final goal.

  In relation to the first specific objective (indentifying demographic characteristics of the subjects), it showed that majority of them (82.3%) had not passed the training course in the prenatal, intrapartal and post natal care and that half of the students were in third and half in fourth years. Majority of the students (77.4%) were between 20-24 years and mean age was 23.15 years.

  The information sources used by the most units (13.7%) were books, magazine and newspapers.

  In relation to the second specific objective (identifying the awareness rate of the midwifery students about the prenatal care needed for the women suffering from AIDS), the units scored average mark in most cases (65.3%) and second low mark in the least of the cases (34.7%).

  In relation to the third specific objective (indentifying the awareness rate of the midwifery students about the intrapartal care of the women suffering from AIDS), the students in most cases (83.1%) had average level of knowledge and 12.1% of cases scored low marks while onle 4.8% of the cases had high score.

  In relation to the fourth specific objective of survey (indentifying the awareness rate of the midwifery students about the post partal care of the women suffering from AIDS), in most cases (65.3%) scored average marks and in the least of cases (34.7%) scored low marks.

  In relation to the fifth specific of the survey (the correlation of the demographic characteristics of the subjects with their awareness rate about the prenatal, intrapartal and post natal care), the result using the chi-square statistical tests showed that between two variables the formal education and the information obtained from the medical specialists and awareness rate of the midwifery students about intrapartal care of the women suffering from AIDS were significant correlation (P<0.05), but overall finding revealed that the varieties of age, educational level source of information, having passed previous training about the prenatal, intrapartal and post natal care of women suffering from AIDS, had no significant effect on the awareness rate of the subjects.

  Based on the findings, suggestions for further research and implementations of the findings in different areas of practice were made.