Promotion of cervical screening uptake by health visitor follow-up of women who repeatedly failed to attend.
BACKGROUND
It is important that if cervical screening programmes are to be successful coverage rates of the target population of women are high. In the context of a well-organized programme in Fife a project was carried out to assess the impact of health visitors following up women who had repeatedly failed to attend for screening.


METHODS
Ten health visitors in Fife were randomly selected and were each asked to approach 20 women registered with the general practice to which they were attached who met the study criteria. Women were asked for their reasons for non-attendance. Subsequent attendance for cervical screening was identified through the on-line cervical cytology database.


RESULTS
Two health visitors declined to participate in the project. One hundred and sixty-two women were offered a visit by a health visitor to discuss their reasons for non-attendance. Forty-two (28 per cent) of the women approached attended for a smear in the following three months. Of those visited by a health visitor 37 per cent attended for a smear.


CONCLUSIONS
In Fife, local beliefs and attitudes about cervical screening together with lack of knowledge of existing clinics with female staff operating outside working hours constitute the major reasons for non-attendance. In this situation, a personal approach based on providing information and individual counselling appears to be successful in encouraging non-attenders to reconsider their decision and participate in the cervical screening programme.
Campbell
H
H
Department of Public Health Medicine, University of Edinburgh.
MacDonald
S
S
McKiernan
M
M
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D003152:Community Health Nursing; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011897:Random Allocation; D012606:Scotland; D013997:Time Factors; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control*; D014626:Vaginal Smears