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Performance of nurses in the Department of Health
as service providers for a cervical screening programme
MY Sum, A Lai, SL Leung
Family Health Service, Department of Health, Wu Chung House, 213
Queen's Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong
A territory-wide cervical screening programme was launched
in Hong Kong in March 2004. Since 2002, 160 nurses from the Department
of Health’s Maternal and Child Health Centres have completed
the training necessary to carry out the screening procedures. A clinical
audit of their performance was carried out between 2002 and 2004.
A customer satisfaction survey revealed that 94% of respondents agreed
or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with the cervical smear
procedure performed by nurses. Since January 2003, all routine cervical
screening tests at Maternal and Child Health Centres have been performed
by nurses. The mean time required to complete a test is 7 minutes.
The mean unsatisfactory smear rate for the year 2003 was 1.3%, well
below the benchmark of 5% set by the Working Party on Quality Assurance
of the Cervical Screening Task Force. The results of this survey confirm
that nurses at Maternal and Child Health Centres are highly effective
and efficient at taking smears and that this is well accepted by clients.
Hong Kong Med J 2005;11:200-3
Key words: Cervix neoplasms; Mass screening; Nurses;
Task performance and analysis
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