Cancer: 68% Ekiti's Federal Hospital Nurses Desert SBE

Image:ePainAssist More than 68% of nurses working at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti do not practice self-breast examination as recommended by experts for early detection of any anomalies, a study revealed. The research team led by Olusegun Emmanuel Gabriel, Department of Family Medicine of the hospital further discovered that majority of the nurses lacked confidence on how to carry out SBE while only sixteen of them representing 15.3% had adequate knowledge of breast cancer. Breast lump, lump in the armpit and change in the shape of the breast or nipple were the earliest warning signs the nurses know. More than 64% of the nurses recognized these signs whereas only 18.8% had good knowledge of the risk factors of breast cancer. Early menarche, late age at child birth and late menopause were identified as risk factors for breast cancer by the nurses. Gabriel and his team observes that the nurses’ knowledge was lower than the study conducted in Ibadan among primary health care nurses and among Egyptian nurses, which reported 60.9% and 39.9% respectively. In Nigeria, breast cancer is responsible for about 16% of all cancer related death. According to World Health Organisation, 30 Nigerians die per hour of either breast, cervix, prostate, colorectal, liver or NHL. Similar Findings • Over 40% of nurses in Ibadan possessed knowledge of the correct time that SBE should be performed monthly. • In Ibadan, 80.9% acknowledged that early detection of breast cancer was through SBE. • In Lagos, increasing age (89%) and current use of oral contraceptive pills (82%) were identified as breast cancer risk factor. • In Bayelsa State, 23.9% of nurses examined their breasts on monthly basis. • In Abakaliki, 38.9% of women had heard of SBE, but 0.4% practiced it monthly. About the Research Researchers assessed the knowledge of signs and risk factors of breast cancer and practice of self breast examination (SBE) among female nurses in a rural tertiary Hospital. Eighty-five nurses ages 20 to 60 years were sampled by simple randomization over a period of eight weeks through a self-administered semi-structured questionnaire. Contributed By Adeleke Ola, Principal Partner, Madob Partners Limited, Nigeria +2348060085911