Knowledge of high school female students about breast self-examination

Abstract

It is important for high school female students, to be familiar with their own bodies and regularly examine their own breasts to check for any changes that could potentially be indicative of breast cancer. It is important to educate students about breast self-examination (BSE) as a means of detecting potential breast cancer early. A quasi-experimental pre and post-test design were implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of the educational program on high school female students by comparing the knowledge level obtained before and after the conduction of the educational program. The sociodemographic results of this study found that before conducting the educational program, a large number of participants (76.5%) had poor knowledge about BSE, but after the conduction of the educational program, there was a significant increase in knowledge, with 90.2% showing a positive effect of the program. The test of significance revealed that the increase in BSE knowledge score as a result of the educational program was highly significant (P < 0.000).     Key words: Breast cancer, breast self-examination, secondary school female students, educational intervention.