Patients’ Level of Knowledge of State-Funded Screening Programs in Family Physician’s Practice

Introduction: Screening tests have been shown to find cancer early and to reduce the risk of dying from cancer. In Latvia from 2000-2015 registered oncological patients had increased. At the end of year 2015, the 74,540 patients with oncology were registered. Aim: To evaluate respondents' knowledge about screening and the reasons for non-use screening. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study uses a survey of family physician's patients. Responded data were summarized and processed with IBM SPSS 23 descriptive and analytical statistics. Results: In this study 102 patients' survey data are used, at age group from 50 to 74 years. And 67% (n = 68) from of overall respondents were women, and 33% (n = 34) of respondents were men. The 35% of respondents visited family doctor 5 to 10 times per year, 29%—2-5 times per year, 19%—more than 10 times per year and 17%—once per year. Knowledge about screening programs of all respondents: 21% (n = 21) rated it as good, 26% (n = 27) rated it as bad and 53% (n = 54) rated it as average. And 49% of respondents said that screening includes colorectal cancer test, 65% that screening includes cervical cancer test, and 62% noted that screening includes mammography. Respondents identified the following reasons why they cannot use screening: 22% lack of informative material, 11% fear that diagnosed oncology, 14% do not feel that this is important, another 53% of respondents always use screening. Correlation was found between the number of family doctor's visit per year and respondent's knowledge about screening programs (p = 0.015, r = 0.24). Conclusions: Despite the increased number of health improvement campaigns, lack of knowledge about screening programs still exists. The results show that half of respondents still do not use screening. Population health and knowledge can be improved by regular health check through family physician.