A qualitative study exploring the primary health care nurses’ lived experiences of cervical cancer screening

Abstract

Background: In the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), cervical cancer is the primary cause of cancer-related female deaths. Lesotho has a cervical cancer incidence that is 2.7 times higher than the global average. This disease can be prevented by vaccination, which is not available in all countries, and through screening, which has been shown to have low uptake even among health professionals.
Aim: To explore primary health care (PHC) nurses’ lived experiences of cervical cancer screening in Lesotho. Thus, to better understand how these experiences can impact nurses’ subsequent screening or their goal of offering screening services to their patients.
Setting: The study was conducted at four PHC centres in the selected district.
Methods: This is a qualitative study in which a phenomenological design was used. Ten nurses were purposively selected and participated in the in-depth interviews. The data were analysed thematically.
Results: The findings revealed participants’ positive and negative experiences with cervical cancer screening. Positive experiences, including good nursing services, freedom of choice and pain prevention, influenced the nurses’ intentions to continue to test in the future and to strongly recommend screening to other women. The negative experiences included a lack of privacy, the absence of counselling and receiving results late. These negative experiences had a detrimental effect on nurses’ intentions to undergo screening in the future. However, they had no impact on their goal of offering screening to other women.
Conclusion: The findings provided essential insights into why cervical cancer screening uptake is low among nurses.
Contribution: This evidence is critical for augmenting the knowledge of how cervical cancer screening programmes could be improved to enhance nurses’ screening uptake and invariably facilitate higher screening rates within the general population.