Family-planning wrses trained to take smears

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 34

Family-planning wrses trained to take smears

PA Wellington The Family Planning Association is planning to offer training for nurses to take cervical smears. A national medical spokeswoman, Dr Helen Roberts, said that familyplanning nurses were already being trained to take smears.

“We have been doing this for some years and we are working towards soon being able to train, outside nurses as well,” she said. The association welcomed the cervical cancer inquiry’s call for a national cervical screen-

ing programme. It was something it had always campaigned for, but believed that as well as more trained nurses there must also be a corresponding increase in trained cytologists and colposcopists, she said.

The association had noticed a huge increase in awareness about smears among women going to its clinics, even before the inquiry’s findings were released last week. Women had been asking for smears and wanting full information about what was happening and what the smear meant. Dr Roberts said the association strongly- be-

lieved in the importance of women receiving full details and that they must have a choice. Cultural barriers made Maori and Pacific Island women harder to reach, and the association had run clinics at maraes to help. Maori women were three times more likely to develop cervical cancer than pakeha women and were less likely to have been screened.

Although national guidelines recommended a smear test at least every three years, the association preferred to offer annual smears for at-risk patients, she said.