Around 100 Hospital and GP Clinic Staff to Take Part in One-day Courses

Dubai, UAE: Around 100 healthcare staff employed by Dubai Hospital, and its affiliated primary healthcare centres, are to undergo basic training in breast cancer detection, in the run-up to a 12 month Emirate-wide awareness campaign that kicks-off in October.

The first of three workshops will take place on 3 August, where 30 staff members will be educated on: how to perform and teach breast self-examination, prevalence data, the common signs and symptoms of disease, and what is involved in diagnosis and treatment.

The training scheme has been initiated by the hospital's multi-disciplinary Breast Cancer Awareness Committee to boost survival rates from the disease through earlier detection.

Hospital data released earlier this month shows that advanced disease affects 80 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Dubai, severely reducing their chances of survival.  

Once trained, staff will be expected to pass on the information they have learned to patients as part of routine health education. They will also be required to help educate the remainder of the DHA's 9,000 employees via informal discussions, seminars and lectures.

“There is not a huge amount of awareness of breast cancer in the country as a whole, especially how to do breast self-examination,” said Wendy Hewitt-Sayer, director of nursing at Dubai Hospital that employs 950 nurses, who will be the main target group for training.

“However, with the training of nurses we hope to facilitate a change in that culture. Nurses are key to raising awareness because they are there at the bed-side all the time, they are there at every stage of a person's life, in illness and in health,” she added.  

“Nurses will educate female in-patients as part of their general nursing care. But, we will also look for opportunities to educate well-women, such as those using our maternity services, mothers accompanying their children, and women attending out-patients and emergency room.”

“Women who are having a baby here, are often accompanied by their mothers, sisters, daughters and maids, and so we will also include them in our education on breast awareness,” she explained. 

Training will be run by international charity Vital Voices, as part of its global breast cancer education campaign, called “Making it Our Business” – a programme spearheaded by the US-based Susan Komen charity which has developed all the educational materials.  

“It is a train-the-trainer scheme that uses word of mouth to spread awareness about breast cancer. It also encourages women to become advocates for other women and their companies,” said Nasseem Rouhani, master trainer/coordinator at Vital Voices and UAE national.

“There really is a negative cultural element to breast cancer here, and it's one of the things we focus on. A lot of the time the response to breast cancer is negative. People think it is a death sentence and that's something we try to eliminate to break the cultural divide,” Rouhani added.  

To ensure awareness is spread throughout the hospital and across the DHA, charge nurses will be required to facilitate staff workshops, and monitor patient education episodes that are routinely documented in the multi-disciplinary notes.

In October the second phase of the awareness campaign will see the roll-out of a strategically developed community-based education programme. Trained healthcare staff will go out into the community to give lectures to local groups of women, female school teachers, University students and employees of large corporations. 

“This year we are planning a comprehensive educational campaign in breast cancer awareness with the goal of bringing down cultural barriers. We want to make women, not only more self aware, but also comfortable enough to ask questions and come forward, when they have a breast-related problem” said Dr. Shaheenah Dawood, senior specialist registrar in oncology, who is heading-up the campaign.