Longitudinal evaluation of a breast cancer training module. Preliminary results

In 1993, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention began a longitudinal evaluation of its efforts to improve early detection and prevention of breast cancer by training health care professionals in special assessment skills, including how to determine risk and how to teach patients to detect breast cancer early.

Sixty-three nurses enrolled in the 1-week training module were studied in this descriptive analysis. Their evaluation incorporated not only pretests and post-tests of knowledge and clinical performance but also an employer survey, pretraining and posttraining patient logs, and an assessment of clinical skills in each participant's practice setting.

Students made statistically significant gains in measures of general knowledge, clinical knowledge and performance, and routine practice of risk assessment, risk counseling, and history taking and physical examination of old (i.e., familiar) patients. Furthermore, the number of patients screened, patients referred, and cancer diagnoses made increased significantly over time, not only between pretraining and posttraining at 6 and 12 months, but also between 6 and 12 months' posttraining.

After learning and practicing new skills, participants successfully incorporated and maintained them and increased referrals and cancers detected, thereby improving the effectiveness of cancer screening.