Breast cancer knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and screening efforts by micro-community of advanced breast cancer patients in Ghana

摘要

The burden of breast cancer is greater in Ghana because most women present with advanced disease with poor prognostic outcomes. A person’s health beliefs, experiences, exposures, and disease representation have been noted to influence his/her health behavior. We examined whether knowing someone who has an advanced breast cancer would influence knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of self and clinical breast-examination. We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey of 67 women, who were purposively sampled based on relation, through patients receiving palliative care services at a tertiary healthcare facility. Participants were non-blood relation of the patients and hence, referred to as patients’ micro-community. Data were collected from January to June 2018, using an adapted and adopted questionnaire and analyzed in R software version 3.5.1.3. Statistical significance was based on P-value?