Özet:

Cancer is one of the most feared diseases of our time. One in every five people in the community is exposed to cancer at some period in their life. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge level and attitudes of the patients who applied to the obstetrics and gynecology outpatient clinics. The population of this cross-sectional study consisted of patients aged 18 years and older who applied to the Obstetrics and Gynecology Outpatient Clinics of Elazığ State Hospital and agreed to participate in the study. A questionnaire was applied to 600 volunteers. At the same time, “the scale of cancer and attitudes towards cancer patients” was used. 62.0% of the participants were female and the mean age was 39.73 ± 14.87. Participants were asked open-ended question “what comes to your mind when you think of cancer”. The most frequent response was that it is a fatal disesase indicated by 40.3% of the participants. 69.0% of participants answered yes to the question of whether cancer can be prevented or not. The mean total score of the scale is 35.61 ± 6.82. In the sub-dimension of concern, there was a significant relationship in favor of women, in the sub-dimension denial there was a significant relationship in favor of men (p <0.05). In the sub-dimension “cancer is inevitable”, a significant difference between the scores was observed in terms of education. The results showed that college and university graduates’ scores are higher than the secondary school graduates (p< 0.05). As a result, nearly half of the participants see cancer as a fatal disease. However, in spite of this negative attitude towards cancer, more than half of the participants are aware of the fact that cancer can be cured by early diagnosis. Since the information about cancer is mostly taken by television, it would be beneficial to increase the number of programs and public spots to raise awareness awareness of cancer on television.

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