Breast Cancer Awareness, Attitudes, and Behaviors of Midwives Participated in a Breast Cancer Prevention Seminar in Tehran

Background: The incidence of breast cancer is rising rapidly worldwide. Midwives have important role to prevent the outcome of it with awareness and Breast Clinical Examination for early detection, So the aim of this study was to investigate the awareness, attitude and behaviors of midwives, regarding Breast Cancer prevention procedure. Methods: The study has conducted on 210 students of midwifery aged (20-62) participated in clarify the duty of midwives in Breast Cancer early detection and prevention seminar in 2016. The data have collected with standard questionnaire. The questionnaire has 4 parts with 55 questions including: age, educational level, number of family members, marital status, family history of Breast Cancer and their knowledge, attitude, and performances. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 13.0. Results: More than half of participants (%65.9) had excellent knowledge about sign and symptoms. 7% of them had weak stage of Brest Cancer risk factors knowledge. Few (%2.2) had harmful and dangerous habits in their lives. This study has determined that respondents 30.8% do Breast self-examination once in a month and 8.6% perform it hardly ever. There was significant relationship between knowledge of Breast Cancer prevention and education (P= 0.02). The level of their attitude had significantly associated with familyhistory (P= 0.03). There was no significant relationship between marital status and Family history with Breast Clinical Examination. Conclusions: The appropriate level of awareness and practice of breast cancer screening have observed to educate other women about breast cancer prevention procedure.

Keywords:

Breast Cancer , Awareness , Breast Clinical Examination , Midwives , Prevention , Seminar