A Survey Of Students` Attitudes About Cervical Cancer Vaccination

Abstract

Introduction: Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women. It is preventable in 99% of cases, provided early prevention is carried out. This is the place of modern nurses and midwives. World experience establishes different approaches and practices for health prevention, in which different medical specialists are involved. A delegated role of trained nurse and midwife in preventive activities is outlined. Therefore, in the context of modern nursing, it is extremely important that the competencies of health care professionals are developed from the training period.

Objective: To investigate the attitude of students towards the primary prevention of cervical cancer, to establish their awareness of prevention methods, and to analyze their knowledge about vaccination.

Material and methods: An anonymous online questionnaire on the Google forms platform was used. A total of 79 students from the Veliko Tarnovo branch of the Medical University "Prof. Dr. Paraskev Stoyanov" Varna, specialties "Nurse" and "Midwife". The research was conducted in September 2023.

Results and Conclusions: The results of the conducted online anonymous survey among students of the "nursing" and "midwife" specialties show that the students have a relatively high level of awareness about the human papillomavirus and its role in the development of cervical cancer. However, they do not have established stable habits for conducting preventive examinations and are not familiar with the specifics of primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer in detail.