Utilization of Cervical Cancer Screening Services by Nurses at Wusakile Mine Hospital, Kitwe District

Zambia has one of the highest cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates in the world due to under-utilization of cervical cancer screening service. Screening remains the cornerstone of prevention. The study sought to assess the utilization of cervical cancer screening services by nurses at Nkana hospital in Kitwe district. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted at Nkana Hospital, Kitwe district, located in the Copperbelt province of Zambia. To maintain anonymity while showing respect to the participate, pseudo-facility name was used because of the nature of the study. Census sampling method was used to select 91 respondents who participated in the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collected data from the respondents and was analysed using SPSS version 21. Chi square test and binary logistic regression were performed to determine associations between the dependent variable and the independent variables. The findings indicated a significant relationship between educational level and the utilization of cervical cancer screening services by nurses, with a P-value of 0.004. Additionally, knowledge about cervical cancer stages was also found to be significantly linked to the utilization of cervical cancer screening services (P-value = 0.017). Furthermore, the importance for nurses to go for screening was also significant with the p-value = 0.05 and likewise willingness to do a CCS test (VIA) was similarly significantly associated with nurses utilization of CCS services with the p-value of 0.000. However, there was no significant association found between overall attitude, overall knowledge, and the use of cervical cancer screening services (p-values>0.05). The results of binary logistic regression showed that readiness to go for CCS test (VIA) was significant and had 0.041 times reduced odds of utilizing CCS services [OR=0.041, CI=0.010, 0.175, p=0.000]. Furthermore, indulging into sex at an early age was significant and had 0.20 times reduced odds of utilizing CCS services [OR=0.203, CI=0.048, 0.852, p=0.029]. The study discovered that the 33% who did not utilized the service, the majority cited that the test was painful (46.7%). There is need to involve nurses who have done the screening in explaining the procedure.