Abstract
Health professionals are a direct source of medical information to the public. Hence, it is crucial that their knowledge is accurate and aids in building awareness. Aim: Increase the knowledge and ability of female nurses to disseminate proper information about breast and cervical cancer to the population. Methodology: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted from April 2017 to January 2018, among 350 nurses working in Beni-Suef university hospital, El Salam private hospital, rural and urban PHC units were surveyed by a self-administered questionnaire to measure their knowledge about cancer cervix. Results: The majority of nurses (76.6%) had an optimal knowledge about cancer cervix with optimal knowledge score about all domains except general knowledge which was suboptimal=57.8%. The knowledge score was significantly affected by some socio-demographic factors. The main source of information about cancer cervix was colleagues by (70.5%) of nurses. Conclusion: There is a need for educating nurses about cancer cervix with giving priority to improve cancer cervix content in the educational nursing curriculum with the development of periodic workplace training courses for nurses and continuous professional education programs that focus on Pap smear for health care workers.
Highlights
A total of 350 nurses from these health care facilities were asked to fill a questionnaire inquiring about their knowledge about cancer cervix
Part 2: knowledge about cancer cervix among nurses which was divided into 6 domains ; general knowledge (8 questions), knowledge of risk factors (8 questions), symptoms and signs (8 questions), diagnostic methods (3 questions), treatment methods (5 questions) and prevention of cancer cervix (2 questions) to get a total of
Knowledge about cancer cervix was mostly from colleagues as a source of information (70.5%) while web based information represented only 0.3%. Another valuable source of information about cervical cancer was from educational material in nursing school reported by 53.3% among 137 nurses followed by media (47.4%) and colleagues and self-study were constituted only 18.2% as a source of information in a similar study conducted in northern Tanzania [8]
Summary
The vast majority of cervical cancer cases are caused by certain strains of the Human Papilloma virus (HPV) [1, 2]. A Papanicolaou test, commonly known as a Pap smear, is recommended by physicians for detection of precancerous cells and small tumors caused by HPV that can later develop into cervical cancer if the condition is left untreated [3]. Detection can allow women to obtain treatment for abnormal cells before they become cancerous, effectively preventing the development of cancer [4]. There is growing evidence that culturally-based knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions regarding cervical cancer influence women’s screening behaviors [5, 6].
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