Investigation of Midwifery Students' Knowledge, Opinions and Religious Attitudes about Breast Milk Banking

Aim: This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between midwifery students' knowledge, attitudes and religious orientations about breast milk bank.Materials and Methods: The population of the cross-sectional and descriptive study consisted of midwifery students of a university, Faculty of Health Sciences (n=283). It was planned to reach the whole of the sample that was not selected and 230 students who were present at the school and accepted to participate in the study were included in the study.Results: When the information questions were evaluated; 37.0% know what a breast milk bank is, 43.0% whether there is a need for a mother milk bank in our country, 41.3% whether using milk from a mother's milk bank will be a religious problem, 48.3% will cause donor milk to cause infection in newborns, 59.6% stated that they had no idea about the reliability of the milk taken from the milk bank. When the attitudes of the students were evaluated; It was determined that 46.1% were not sure about donating their own milk to the breast milk bank, 38.2% would apply to the breast milk bank when the baby needed it, 42.2% said that donating milk was ethical and 56.1% would recommend this institution to the insufficient mothers. The mother's milk 35.2'n% of the students they believe to be the demand for bank institutions, they think that there should be 43.9'n% of these organizations in each city, has been seen if the 49.6'n% they said they would support mother's milk bank to be established in Turkey. It was found that 72.6% of the students thought that the milk taken from the breast milk bank would not replace the baby's own mother's milk, and 58.3% thought that the donors and the donors should know each other's identities. In the correlation analysis conducted to determine the knowledge and attitudes of the students about the average score obtained from the Religious Orientation Scale (ROS) and the breast milk bank; It was determined that the use of milk from the milk bank would create religious problems as the mean score of the ROS increased, and the application of breast milk to the mother's milk bank would increase if the ROS mean score increased.Conclusion: In this study, it was found that most of the students had poor knowledge about the breast milk bank and had negative attitudes