Objective: To determine the effects of education on knowledge, attitude and practice status regarding cervical cancer, its prevention and screening among registered nurses working at tertiary care hospitals.
Methods: The quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2016(15th June-15th July) at Civil Hospital, Karachi, and Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, and comprised registered nurses enrolled through non-probability convenience sampling. Baseline demographic characteristics and knowledge, attitude and practice levels of the nurses was gathered using a self-structured pretested and validated questionnaire. An education session on, "prevention and screening of cervical cancer" was conducted and its effectiveness was determined using the same questionnaire post-intervention. The difference in pre- and post-intervention values were determined. P<0.05 was considered significant.
Results: There were 129 subjects with a mean age of 34.2±3.8 years, and 69(53.5%) had work experience of 5 years or less. There was significant mean difference between baseline and post-intervention scores in terms of knowledge and practice (p<0.05), while attitude scores were not significantly different (p>0.05). The difference in knowledge scores were significant in all age groups, marital status, work experience and education (p<0.05 each).
Conclusions: There was a highly significant impact of education on the knowledge level of the subjects.
Keywords: Prevention, Screening, Nursing education, Cervical cancer, Knowledge, Practice of screening, Pap smear, HPV vaccine, HPV, Human papilloma virus.