Knowledge of healthcare professionals on cervical cancer prevention. Alternatives for medical education.

Objective: Several studies have shown the importance of health care profess ionals as predictors of the use of cervical cancer screening (CCS). Materia l and methods. A cross- sectional study of 520 health care professionals in the State of Morelos during 1998, in order to evaluate and quantify their level of knowledge on the impact, etiology, screening, diagnosis and treatm ent of cervical cancer. A 1 to 10 scale questionnaire was given, and the sa mple included family medicine specialists, general practitioners, specialis t and general nurses, and social workers. Statistical analysis included ana lysis of variance and 95% confidence intervals. Results. A knowledge mean o f 4.74 (95% CI 4.57-4.88) was observed for a scale of 10; specialist physic ians scored higher (mean 5.21, 95% Cl 4.81-5.60) than social workers (mean 3.07, 95% CI 2.31-3.82). Periodicity of the Pap test in most cases was less than I year and there was poor consensus about the age period during which the Pap test should be obtained. The knowledge level was lower when trying to identify etiologic aspects and treatment perspectives. Conclusions. The results of this study show that, besides the improvement of undergraduate academic programs, it is necessary to improve educational interventions for health care professionals through the updating, recycling, training, healt h education, and continuing medical education, among others, to promote pro fessional competence and thus improve the quality of medical care.