Lifestyle and cancer prevention in female employees at a health institution

Abstract

Objective: To establish the relationship between lifestyle for prevention of cervix and breast cancer and perceptual cognitive factors from the Pender model in working women.
Materials and methods: Correlation and cross-sectional study with a random sample of 143 working women. The Lifestyle index is the total score of 5 variables: Papanicolau test, breast self-exam, physical activity, body mass index, and cigarette smoking.
Results: The mean age for the sample was 44.4 + 6.2; 87% of the women had higher education and 85% were working in health care services. A total of 89% of the women had unhealthy lifestyles because of the lack of regular physical activity, not having a Papanicolau test according to the norm, not practicing breast self-exams, and having an altered body mass index. There was significant correlation between lifestyle and occupation, and also with self-efficacy perception for breast self-examination.
Conclusion: The lifestyles for most of the women sampled were unhealthy.
Recommendations: It is also recommend conducting culturally sensitive healthcare campaigns in addition to setting up flexible attention schedules for women.

Authors

• Gladys Eugenia Canaval
• María Neila Sánchez