Knowledge of Cervical Cancer and Its Screening among Female Nurses Working in Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital, South-Eastern Nigeria

Background: Cancer of the cervix, although a preventable disease, continues to be one of the commonest cancers among women in developing countries. Unlike the developed nations, developing countries still experience late presentations of cervical cancer, probably due to poor knowledge and poor uptake of the preventive measures. Adequate knowledge of this condition among nurses will be beneficial to women as nurses constitute a significant proportion of care givers to women.

Methodology: A cross sectional survey of consenting female nurses working in a teaching hospital using pretested self administered questionnaires was done. Data analysis was with SPSS (IBM SPSS statistics 20). Chi square test was used to test for association between variables and level of significance was set at P ≤ 0.05.

Results: The mean age of the respondents was 37.1 years ± 9.8. One hundred and fifty three (92.7%) had heard of cervical cancer. Only 20% identified HPV as the cause of cervical cancer. Younger age, junior rank and having nursed a cervical cancer patient significantly influenced the knowledge of the correct cause of cervical cancer. More than 90% knew about Pap test but only 16% have actually had a Pap test.

Conclusion: There was a fairly good level of awareness of cervical cancer among this group of nurses but the knowledge of the aetiology was very poor. Awareness of the screening procedure was also high but this did not translate into practice as only few of the women have actually had a Pap smear test.