Knowledge, attitudes, and practice of breast self-examination among female health workers in Isfahan, Iran

Breast cancer as a most common organ cancer in women is the first cause of death among women with 40-45 years old. The only way to control this disease is early detection, that it can be treated in about 90% of women with breast cancer. The best way for early detection of breast cancer is screening, and the best accessible way is breast self-examination (BSE). Considering this fact that female health workers are responsible for improvement of public health, in addition to self-care, they can encourage the clients and help to improve healthy goals. Therefore, this study investigates the knowledge, attitudes, and practice (KAP) of BS E among female health workers.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was done among 119 female health workers in Isfahan, working in healthcare centers. The method of sampling was clustering. KAP of theses participants were assessed with KAP questioner. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics methods.

The mean age of participants was 38/3 ± 7/27. The knowledge about breast cancer and doing B SE was good (79/8%) in most participants and (72/45%) of them have positive attitudes, but only (39/5%) of the samples performed BSE regularly every month. A significant relationship was found between the attitudes and the university degree of the health workers and also between age, university degree, and the times of taking part in education classes with performing BSE in the best time for BSE (P < 0.005). A total of 12/6% of them did not have a good performance.

Considering that health workers can play an important role in encouraging the clients to perform healthy and preventive behaviors, their weak behavior is not acceptable in these groups. This result also shows that additional studies are needed to identify the factors that make women using screening services and encourage them for using these methods.