Knowledge and Attitudes of School Nurses and Parents Towards HPV Prevention

Introduction: According to the Research Institute of Urology Diseases, for every 130 vaccinations against HPV, a cancer of cervical uterus is prevented. It has been estimated that in case of 80 HPV vaccinations deaths from cervical cancer would be reduced to two-thirds (CDC). School nurses are professionals who will guide parents to make the decision of vaccinating their children. Purpose: Investigation of knowledge and attitudes of School nurses and parents regarding the HPV Vaccination. Methodology: Search has been performed in "Google Scholar", "PubMed" και "SumSearch" data bases for original research studies published in English language between 2011–2017. Results: 13 studies have been chosen, of which 8 referred to the knowledge and attitudes of school nurses for HPV, where 3 of them refer to parents as well and the other 5 that refer to parents’ knowledge and attitudes. The themes that came up were: knowledge of HPV and vaccination, support for the vaccination program and barriers in its application, vaccine’s safety and education – information. According to the researches, school nurses have a satisfied level of knowledge for the transmission and its relationship with the cancer (65–95%), however they fail to know the recommended vaccination age. The majority of school nurses (64–92%) have a positive attitude about the vaccination program and they provide written information with more comfort than the verbal ones. Most of them consider vaccine as safe, but have doubts of its effectiveness. Barriers in program implementation are the workload, the need to increase staff and more relevant professional education. Parents know that the vaccine prevents cancer, but they don’t know the appropriate vaccination age and the risk for both sexes to be infected by the virus. Parents refusal to vaccinate their children is related to their belief that the vaccine will lead to increased unsafe sexual behavior. Furthermore, they are worried about future side effects, because they don’t believe that the vaccine is safe and effective. Conclusions: School nurses have sufficient knowledge about virus’s transmission and its connection to cancer, they also support vaccination. Parents’ knowledge was insufficient which leads to concerns about side effects.

Category: Volume 58, N 3
Hits: 482 Hits
Created Date: 15-09-2019
Authors: Dimtira Roussou , Anna Kavga , Alexandra Koreli