The nurse as health educator: the prevention and early detection of cancer.

Abstract

To assess their potential as health educators 785 female hospital nurses (trained nurses, learners, auxiliaries and nursery nurses) were asked, by means of a postal questionnaire, to give their opinion of three measures of cancer control--the cervical smear test, breast self-examination (BSE) and not smoking. Eighty-four % thought the cervical smear test of definite value, 68% had this opinion of BSE, but only 59% thought that it was of definite value not to smoke. Most nurses saw all three measures as having some degree of benefit as few rejected any measure as being of no value. Factors related to whether they regarded a particular measure as being of definite, rather than a lesser degree of value, included (but not necessarily always for all measures) grade, training, age, professional experience of cancer nursing, acceptance of the curability of cancer, knowledge of survival rates, likelihood of reading an article about cancer, and smoking behaviour. It is suggested that nurses' relative assessment of the measures is not based on the intrinsic value of the measures themselves, but on the nurses' personal health behaviour and on the perceived difficulty in undertaking a measure. Furthermore, additional barriers to nurses' likelihood of recommending such measures to others include: lack of understanding of, and skills in health education and an inadequate knowledge base. Thus, simply exhorting nurses to engage in health education is unlikely to succeed. The barriers described have to be taken into account and in particular nurses need to be taught health education skills.