Awareness of working women in Mansoura University about ovarian cancer: An intervention follow-up study

Abstract

Background and Aim: Ovarian cancer causes more death than any other gynecologic tumor, other than it accounts for about 3% of all cancers in women. Aim: This study was aimed to raise the awareness of working women in Mansoura University about ovarian cancer.

Methods: Study Design: A quasi-experimental one group pre-post test design was utilized. Setting: The study was conducted in different faculties of Mansoura University. Subjects: The study subjects included 199 working women in different faculties of Mansoura University distributed as: 92 women from practical faculties, 33 from theoretical faculties and 74 from medical faculties using a stratified random sample. Tool: Self-administered questionnaire consists of three different parts. The first part includes socio-demographic characteristics of working women, the second part includes the source of knowledge about ovarian cancer and the third part includes the working women knowledge about ovarian cancer.

Results: About 46.7% of the study sample their age ranged from 35 to less than 50 years. About 41.2% among the study group did not have any source of knowledge about ovarian cancer. The study participants had poor knowledge about the ovarian cancer manifestation, risk factor, treatment and prevention in the pre test that improved after the educational session.

Conclusions: The health education session about ovarian cancer showed a significant effect in the form of a remarkable increase in the participants' level of knowledge about the disease. Thus, health education about ovarian cancer should be adopted as an element of the services offered to the working women.