Knowledge and Attitude towards Cervical Cancer Prevention among Female University Students and Hospitals Staffs in Iran

Background: Cervical cancer is one of the preventable cancers. According to the importance of cervical cancer and prevention of it, current study aimed at investigating knowledge and attitude of female students and hospital staff in these fields. Method: This is a Cross-Sectional study conducted in Medical and Nursing faculties and hospitals of East-Azerbaijan Province of Iran. Participants were medical and paramedical female students and female staff in hospitals who were selected by stratified random sampling techniques. Tools for data collection were questionnaires which their Validity and reliability were verified (α=0.8). Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data by SPSS.16. Result: Response rate was 71 %( 426 from 600) and 63.5% (254from 400) for students and staff respectively. 29.1% represented that they had no information about cervical cancer. 70 (10.3%) of participants expressed their knowledge as high, 360 cases (52.9%) as intermediate, 237 cases (34.9%) as low and about 93% of participants considered cervical cancer as one of the severe health problems. there is only statistically significant relationship between variables of education(p<.001) and occupation(p<.001) with knowledge.Conclusion: According to the importance of the role of medical students and personnel as educational source and imitable patterns in conducting health and preventive behaviors, necessity of increasing and improving scientific level of samples seems vital. comprehensive and proper education of all people especially students and personnel of medical sciences and improving attitudes of people towards cervical cancer and its monitoring, are recommended.

کلیدواژه ها:

Uterine Cervical Neoplasms ، knowledge ، attitude