Assessing Cancer Knowledge among Health Students in Portugal

From a sample of 170 health students, 72.4% (123) got more than half of the questions right. Lung cancer is the topic with lower knowledge. Overall, there seems to be a positive statistically significant correlation between students' knowledge and their perceptions about their knowledge (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.05). Despite the satisfactory levels of general knowledge about cancer, there should be more campaigns that are appealing to students that emphasise prevention as a mean to reduce cancer incidence. There is still work to be done to have more awareness among health students, especially regarding risk behaviours and screenings related to cancer. New studies with more representative samples should be conducted.