Evaluating female nursing students' knowledge and attitudes regarding breast self-examination.

Abstract

The purpose of our study was to evaluate female nursing students' knowledge and attitudes regarding breast self-examination. The sample consisted of 175 nursing students from a University of Cyprus. We collected data via a questionnaire which included the Greek version of the Champion Health Belief Model scale and questions regarding the participants' demographic characteristics. More than half of the participants (58.3%) said they were knowledgeable about breast self-examination and 29.1% of them had been taught about it during their studies. Nevertheless, 59.9% reported never having performed breast self-examination, while 40.1% had performed it at least once. Only 10.9% of the students performed breast self-examination every month for more than a year. Self-confidence had a positive and significant correlation (0.86) with breast self-examination frequency. Also, we found a quite low level of breast self-examination knowledge and practice levels and this highlights the need for establishing breast cancer prevention programs.