Knowledge, attitude and practice of nurses regarding early detection, caring and support of men with prostate cancer at health facilities in Windhoek, Namibia: A mixed method study
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Date
2021
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Publisher
University of Namibia
Abstract
The aim of the study was to determine, explore and assess the knowledge, attitude and practices
of nurses regarding early detection, caring and support of men with prostate cancer at health
facilities in Windhoek, Namibia. Prostate cancer is the second most frequent cancer diagnosis
in men and the fifth leading cause of death worldwide. Nurses have been reported in the
literature to offer minimum support for prostate cancer patients. The same trend seems to be
evident in Windhoek and it's not clear what could be the reason for this discrepancy hence the
researcher was interested in knowing the knowledge, practice and attitude of nurses towards
prostate cancer care services.
The study adopted a mixed research, convergent parallel design to understand the research
problem. For objective 1 and 2, a quantitative approach and descriptive design were used to
determine knowledge and practice using self-administered structured questionnaires. A sample
of 105 respondents was selected randomly and data was analysed using SPSS. For objective 3,
a qualitative descriptive design was used to explore attitude from 10 purposively selected
participants using semi-stmctured interviews.
The findings of the study revealed that respondents had a low level of knowledge 86 (81.9% ),
but they had good practices 54 (51.4%). Participants expressed positive attitudes towards early
detection, negative attitudes towards caring and negative attitudes towards support. The
findings further reported health facility (P-value=0.003) and health status (P-value= 0.039) to
be a significant predictor of practice. Moreover, the study revealed that the level of knowledge
was not significantly associated with practice P-value= 0.696.
The researcher recommended ongoing in-service training with well-stipulated outcomes on
prostate cancer services to improve nurses' knowledge. Additionally, the researcher
recommended the development of a model to facilitate the effective provision of prostate
cancer care services in Namibia
Description
A theses submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in Nursing Science
Keywords
Explore and assess the knowledge, Early detection, Prostate cancer, Namibia, Windhoek, Cancer diagnosis, Health facilities, University of Namibia