Acceptability and implementation challenges of smartphone-based training of community health nurses for visual inspection with acetic acid in Ghana: mHealth and cervical cancer screening

What is it about?

Cervical cancer causes significant number of death among women in resource-poor settings. Visual inspection with acetic acid is a simple method to detect pre-cancerous lesions and treat them effectively. Nurses can be trained to perform this procedure. However, current standard training is not sufficient to help them maintain good quality screening over time. We used mobile phones to help mentor nurses remotely when they take pictures of cervical lesions and sent them via texting or email to an expert for mentorship and support. In this study we evaluated the acceptability and feasibility of using mobile phones in cervical cancer screening and its training by interviewing all relevant stakeholders including patients, nurses, and support staff. This strategy has the potentials to significantly improve the quality of a simple cervical cancer screening method in many developing settings and improve women's survival.

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