Knowledge, attitudes, practice and related factors of oral cancer prevention among public health nurses in Taiwan

Objectives: Public health nurses (PHNs) in Taiwan act as individual/family-based primary care providers and as population-based community care providers. A little information is currently available on the ability of PHNs to prevent oral cancer. We surveyed knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of oral cancer prevention among PHNs. Methods: This study recruited 400 PHNs through the Taiwan Public Health Center. A structured electronic questionnaire was used to collect PHNs’ demographics and scale scores for oral cancer knowledge, attitudes and preventive behaviour. Results: Providing PHNs with oral cancer prevention education, having the supervisor's support for preventive work and receiving in-service education would improve PHNs’ knowledge, attitude and behaviour for oral cancer prevention. Attitude, oral cancer-related courses arranged by current employer (major factor), supervisor's support for work and having responsibility for oral cancer prevention were associated with the oral cancer preventive behaviour of PHNs, and explain 41.1% of total variance. Conclusions: We established a linear regression model for understanding the role of PHNs in the practice of preventing oral cancer. It may be useful for the government in improving school-based and in-service oral cancer prevention education programmes for PHNs as well as developing programmes for increasing public awareness and education of oral cancer prevention.