Nurses' knowledge, beliefs and status of vaccination about human papilloma virus

Cervix cancer is one of the cancers that has high mortality both in our country and the world. Apart from this, it is a type of cancer that has the chance to be prevented and early diagnosed. Women's getting vaccinated is significantly affected by the awareness of the nurses. The knowledge, level of belief, and status of vaccination of the health staff are quite important for their consultancy and training service on this subject to be successful. This study is a descriptive study to investigate nurses' knowledge, beliefs and status of vaccination related to HPV. The data of the research were collected at Başkent University Ankara Hospital and its associated units between March and April 2020. 332 nurses who work in Başkent University Ankara Hospital and its associated units formed the universe of the research. Because 20 nurses did not fully fill in the questionnaire forms, 250 nurses formed the scope of the study. The data was collected through the form which was prepared by the researcher and it consists of three parts. In the first of part, the questionnaire, including the questions examining the demographic information of nurses and their status of HPV and HPV vaccination was used. In the second part "Health Belief Model Scale", regarding HPV and its Vaccination, which was developed by Kim in 2012 and was by Güvenç et al to Turkish in 2016 to define the health belief, and in the last part, "Human P V Knowledge Scale", Turkish validity and reliability study of which were carried out by Demir and Özdemir (2019), were used. The data collection form was filled by the participants themselves. The Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis H, Chi-square tests and Pearson correlation analysis were utilized. 95.2% of the participants are women, 4.8% are men, 70.8% are in the 18-35 age group and 61.2% are undergraduate graduates. 4% of the participants specified that they had the HPV vaccine. There is a signifcant relationship relationship between the HPV vaccine status and income variables (p <0.05) Participants with better income have a considerably higher rate of HPV vaccine. The higher the education level is, the higher the SIM scale scores are. The nurses stated that they do not have enough knowledge about HPV. On the other hand, the rate of the nurses with vaccination is low. As a result of the correlation between HPV Knowledge Scale scores and SIM scale scores, it has been found out that there is a positive correlation between nurses' level of knowledge and health beliefs. In this direction, in-service training, seminars, etc. in the formal education system should be planned to increase the awareness of nurses about HPV and vaccination.