Female nurses' knowledge, competence and involvement in cervical cancer screening in health care settings in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Nurses are involved in reproductive health services and should provide cervical cancer screening. This study investigated nurses' knowledge, competence and extent of documentation of cervical screening at the three levels of care in Osun State.

Methods: Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 130 female nurses from all levels of care in Osun state. Out of the 130 respondents, 65(50%), 30(23.1%) and 35(26.9%) were from tertiary, secondary and primary health care facilities respectively. A self-administered questionnaire, observational checklist and documentation checklist were used to assess knowledge, competence and documentation of findings.  Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20.

Result: The mean age of respondent was 39.34±7.24 years. Cervical inspection during intra-uterine contraceptive device insertion and Visual Inspection of cervix with Lugol's Iodine solution were available procedures at all levels of care. Pap smear screening was available in the tertiary institutions.  Findings showed that 50(76.9%), 17(56.7%), and 24(68.6%) of respondents scored over 50%  in the knowledge assessment scale from the tertiary, secondary and primary health care facilities respectively. Twenty-six (42.6%) respondents across the three levels of care scored less than 50% in the competence assessment scale. There was no association between level of knowledge and type of facility (X² = 1.619, df=1, p=0.05). Seven (58.3%), 2(14.3%) and 1(2.9%) of respondents fully documented findings at the tertiary, secondary and primary care levels respectively.

Conclusion: Majority of female nurses had good knowledge and conduct different types of cervical cancer screening but majority had low competence and inadequately documented their findings.