Long Pant Innovation to Reduce Exposure During Cervical Specimen Collection for Pap Smear

Abstract

Pap smear screening in target group aged 30-60 years old in Khlongthom Nuea Sub-district, Klongthom District, Krabi Province in the period of 5 years since 2015 had exceeded 87.86% coverage. However, there were still 12.14% of women of reproductive age who had never been screened. The main reasons for non-screening included limited transportation, embarrassment to receive service and the complicated screening procedure. To facilitate the attendance, an innovation of Pap smear long pants was developed to reduce exposure during cervical speciment collection and minimize screening duration. The main purpose was to increase acceptance to cervical cancer screening and reduce the timing of the procedure. This study aimed to assess the utilization of the innovation and to assess the satisfaction of the target group of women aged 30-60 years old who received the service. It was conducted from October 2018
to September 2019. Data was collected by using a questionnaire which was divided into 3 parts: general information, the use of the innovation, and the satisfaction assessment; and were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, mean and percentage. It was found that 120 women among 153 target population who never had Pap smear screening came to receive the services, 78.43%. The duration of the examination per person was 7.24 minutes (SD=0.62), compared to 12.32 minutes (SD=0.84) before the study. The target groups were satisfied with the innovation, with the mean score of 3.92. Thus, the long-pants innovation had increased acceptability and reduced the embarrassment during cervical specimen collection leading to high satisfaction of the target population.