Predictors of Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening Among Nurses in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Globally, cervical cancer cause a significant death rate annually and Nigeria is not an exception. Routine cervical cancer screening has been shown to greatly reduce the number of new cases and deaths accrued to the disease. The researcher´s interaction with nurses showed many nurses with adequate knowledge of cervical cancer and screening still display some form of nonchalant attitude toward the screening. Nurses who form a majority of healthcare providers in all settings often carried away by the care they render to patients to the extent that they neglect there own health. Previous studies have focused on knowledge and attitude to cervical cancer screening among women while no study known to the researcher has been carried out on predictors of cervical cancer screening among nurses particularly in Ogbomoso. Aim: To determine the predictors of cervical cancer screening among nurses in Ogbomoso, Oyo State. Methods: This is a descriptive cross sectional study that used a structured pretested questionnaire with a reliability score of 0.814 to collect data from 230 nurses who are randomly selected from Lautech Teaching Hospital and Bowen University Teaching Hospital in Ogbomoso. Data were collected after approval from the ethical review board of the facilities. Descriptive statistics were used to analyzed sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge of participants, attitudes of participants toward screening and association of factors with utilization of cervical cancer screening among participants while inferential statistics were analyzed with χ2 and Student t test using Statistical Package For Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 21 for Windows. Results: The mean age of participants was 38.7, SD=10.724, (72.2%) were married, (49.6%) were graduate and earn a minimum of #45,000 as monthly income. The respondents reported several factors such as level of education (71.7%), financial status (76.5%), marital status (64.8%), lack of facilities (77%), lack of awareness (75.5%), long distance to place of screening (68.7%), inconvenient screening time (75.7%) and age (65.2%) as influencing utilization of cervical cancer screening. Marital status was shown to be significantly related with utilization of cervical cancer screening with p value=0.047. Conclusion: Conclusively, the study has shown that marital status is a significant predictor of cervical cancer screening. Female nurses generally are therefore encouraged to use screening services more regularly and the hospital can help by subsidizing the cost of screening and make it more easily available and accessible for nurses. For the married nurses who utilizes screening services, they are encouraged to do it according to the guideline recommended for screening.