Empowering perimenopausal women: A critical examination of opportunistic teaching on cervical cancer awareness.

Background: Despite the presence of screening and effective vaccines, cervical cancer continues to rank among the most prevalent cancers in India. Perimenopausal women commonly lack awareness and hold a pessimistic attitude toward the disease. The study to evaluate the impact of opportunistic teaching on increasing knowledge about cervical cancer awareness.

Materials and methods: A single-group pre-test, post-test design was used to select 120 women attending the Gynecological Outpatient Department (OPD) at a Peri-Urban Teaching Hospital in Haryana using a convenient sampling technique. The pre-test knowledge score was collected on the first day using a semi-structured questionnaire. The descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the data.

Results: The initial assessment found that 55.83% of women had inadequate knowledge. After a single teaching session, only 1.67% of women had poor knowledge, 46.17% had average knowledge, and 51.67% had good knowledge of cervical cancer. The respondents' mean post-test knowledge score of 13.540 was notably greater than their mean pre-test knowledge score of 7.30. The participants' knowledge scores demonstrated a strong correlation with both parity and their family history of cancer (P > 0.5).

Conclusion: There is a lack of knowledge and awareness about cervical cancer regardless of age, social status, religion, and education level among perimenopausal women. Opportunistic teaching is a cost-effective and efficient way to improve awareness of cervical cancer in a resource-limited country such as India.