Attitude towards breast cancer and the acceptance of breast cancer screening
It is important to study the attitude of women towards breast cancer and uptake of breast
cancer prevention measures because there attitude will highly determine whether these
women take up breast cancer prevention measures such as breast self-examination and
breast cancer screening. A qualitative study that was conducted to investigate breast
cancer related knowledge, beliefs and attitudes among women from minority ethnic
groups living in London and Sheffield found out that, people fear cancers and that this
made them reluctant to discuss breast cancer. Breast cancer was considered a taboo
subject for all. Although the white British women reported that they would feel
comfortable talking about their breasts to friends and family, they said they would feel
less comfortable talking about breast cancer. The white British women used words such
as ’The Big C’ to describe cancer, whereas the Asian and Arab women used more
emotive and descriptive language such as ‘disaster’, scared’, shaky’, ‘panic’ and
‘dragon’. The Asian and Arab women also reported that no words for cancer exist in their
languages. A further common feature was that breast cancer evoked bad feelings, made
them feel upset and scared.
However, the Asian and Arab women were more pessimistic, strongly associating breast
cancer with ‘A death sentence’ and ‘losing your hair’. All the groups reported that older
people in their family and communities were more pessimistic and frightened by cancer,
which they attributed to their experience of knowing someone who was diagnosed late
and who died shortly afterwards. The Asian and Arab women also related the pessimistic
attitudes of older women in their community to them not having had much experience of
breast cancer in their country of origin – which made it an unknown mysterious disease.
They also reported that breast cancer was a new disease for them, making it more
frightening as they began to encounter more of it in the UK. (Scanlon, 2004).
Krombein (2006), evaluated knowledge, attitudes, and actual screening practices
regarding breast cancer among women in the Bonteheuwel township in the Western Cape
using both quantitative and qualitative approaches with a random sample of 100 women
and a separate selected group of nine women who participated in a focus group
discussion. The result showed that majority of women (66%) felt that health was
not just a matter of luck or faith, but was partly self-determined. More than half
(52%) admitted worrying a lot about their health. The vast majority (99%)
regarded breast cancer as either a very serious (88%; 95% CI: 82%-94%) or fairly
serious (11%) disease, and 82% felt they were personally vulnerable, i.e.
“somewhat likely” (69%) or “very likely” (13%) to someday get breast cancer,
although the vast majority (92%) felt they were only equally likely (72%) or less
likely (20%) than other women to develop breast cancer themselves. Only 45% felt
that screening helped detect disease early, but 86% believed that the chances of
recovery were good/very good with early diagnosis and intervention, and 82%
believed that most cases could be cured. The main barriers to screening identified
were a fear of being diagnosed with breast cancer and insufficient knowledge
(20%). Others included the pain of the procedure (12%), cost (4%), “unnecessary
unless there are symptoms” (4%), “nothing can be done anyway” (4%),
forgetfulness (3%), lack of time (2%) and time-consuming (1%).
A cross-sectional survey designed to assess level of knowledge, attitude and
practice of breast self-examination (BSE) amongst all nursing students of Lagos
University Teaching Hospital using self-administered questionnaire, which was
designed to evaluate information such as socio-demographic data, level of
knowledge of breast cancer, the attitude of the participant toward BSE and practice
of BSE. The respondent’s knowledge of breast cancer and breast self-examination
was high (97.3%); 85.6% knew how to carry out breast self-examination correctly.
Majority, 58.6% obtained their information from television/ radio. The attitude of
respondents to breast self-examination was good, most of the respondents, 98.5%
thought breast self-examination was necessary and 84.3% claimed to have carried
out breast self-examination before. Respondents’ practice of breast self-
examination was also good with 80.2% of the respondents claiming to carry out
breast self-examination regularly. The level of awareness of breast cancer and
breast self-examination was high among nursing students of the Lagos University
Teaching Hospital (Rosemary, Nicholas, Modele, Adekunle, Adebayo, 2011).
A cross-sectional interview-based study conducted in 2008 among 500 women at
five randomly selected primary health care centers in Qatar to determine their
knowledge, attitude and practices regarding cervical cancer and screening. Just
over 85% had heard of cervical cancer and 76% had heard about the Pap smear.
Knowledge of cervical cancer was significantly greater among women aged 30–49
years, and those employed, married for > 15 years, with a university degree, or
who had had 4 births or 3 miscarriages. Almost 40% had had a Pap smear test at
least once and 85.5% of the rest would have a test if they were told that the
procedure was painless and simple. Over half wanted the test to be done in the
well-woman clinic at the primary health care center. Knowledge and practice was
inadequate among those under 30 years old, those recently married and those with
a lower education level. (Al-Meer, Aseel, Al-Khalaf, Al-Kuwari and Ismail, 2011).
From the review, attitude has been shown to influence the uptake of breast cancer
screening; women with a positive attitude tend to practice breast self-examination
and breast cancer screening. Most women regard breast cancer as a very serious
disease and felt they were personally vulnerable and therefore practiced breast self-
examination and screening with the belief that early detection can lead to better
treatment.
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