TIME SINCE PRIOR TESTING AND QUALITY OF PAP TEST SPECIMENS COLLECTED BY NURSES TRAINED TO SERVE NATIVE POPULATIONS

To respond to the service needs of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Pacific Island women, we developed an educational program (Nurses Pro viding Annual Cancer Screening; NPACS) that trains clinic nurses to co llect Pap test specimens, perform clinical breast examinations, and or ganize clinical screening systems for cancer prevention and control. T he purpose of this analysis is to determine the impact of the training program on nurses' ability to collect satisfactory Pap test specimens . Nurses in 30 clinics serving American Indian and Pacific Island wome n underwent 40 hours of training to perform clinical breast examinatio ns, collect Pap test specimens, and organize clinical systems to suppo rt screening activities. In addition, they reported the quality of the tests to the NPACS office. As of July 15, 1997, 1733 Pap test specime ns were collected and reported by the nurses. These reports were used to generate a rate of satisfactory specimens by year. The interpretati on of quality was not available for 124 tests (7.2%). However, only 6 tests (0.3%) were reported as unsatisfactory for pathologic analysis. After 1 week of training, nurses can collect high-quality Pap test spe cimens. Policy makers should consider implementing this service delive ry model in any location where women suffer from the lack of cancer pr evention and control services. Cancer 1998;83: 1809-14, (C) 1998 Ameri can Cancer Society.