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Abstract

Introduction:Breast cancer in women is a global scourge due to its frequency and high fatality rate. In our developing countries, it remains frequent with a still high mortality due to ignorance, late and non-systematized screening.Research question: do the caregiver profile and the hospital experience guarantee attitudes and aptitudes favorable to the early detection of breast cancer in female caregivers?Objective: Our study aimed to find attitudes and aptitudes favorable or not to the early detection of breast cancer of nursing staff in Douala hospitals, in order to better develop strategies for optimizing mass screening. Methodology:This was a comparative cross-sectional study with analytical purposes for a period of 07 months from January 15 to July 15, 2020 conducted by means of a structured and pre-tested questionnaire after informed consent obtained from the participants approached in the consultation units of these hospitals. The study variables were behavioral and practical. The data collected were entered and analyzed using SPSS 23.0 software (statistical package for social sciences) with a significance level established for a value of p < 0.05. Results:We selected 1000 women fulfilling our inclusion criteria, including 818 users and 182 caregivers, i.e. an average ratio of 4 users for 1 caregiver. In the study population, attitudes as a whole were good but not discriminating for the two matched groups. In contrast to attitudes, the caring nature (and probably its hospitable corollary) appeared favorably protective of bad practices for early detection of cancer breast (OR=0.21 p<0.0001*) Conclusion:At the end of our study, it appeared that the caregiver profile was protective against bad practice in early detection of breast cancer with, however, a persistent problem given the attitudes, which were certainly good, but similar to those of users whose practices used more traditional pharmacopoeia and religious beliefs.