Self Efficacy of High-Risk Women for Breast Self Examination Practice in Taxila, Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Timely finding of cancer in breast especially through breast self examination practice in low-income countries such as Pakistan is crucial. Self efficacy is one of stronger predictor for doing regular practice of breast self examination among women.

Objective: The study aim is to determine the self efficacy of high-risk women in doing breast self examination.

Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was done in a of tertiary care hospital, Pakistan. The sample was selected simple random technique which was applied for selecting the 72 high-risk women for study. A modified version of BSE Self-Efficacy scale and self-structured demographics instruments were used for data collection. Version 23 of SPSS was used for statistical analysis of the descriptive statistics.

Results: Findings revealed that mean age of participants was 23.86 years with SD= 4.92. 86.1% participants were in the 20-30 years old, 68.05% of participants had metric level education and 83.3% women had regular menstrual cycle. BSE self-efficacy for high-risk women mean score was 574.8 (SD= 340.7), and range was between 0 to 1200. Among high-risk women 58.3% were not confident at all in doing BSE, some of them were moderately confident to BSE (30.6%), and only 11.1% high-risk women were fully confident in doing BSE.

Conclusion: The self efficacy for breast self examination practice was low in high-risk women, so there is a need to educate women and teach them about breast self examination techniques.