Four hundred Dundee women who failed to respond to a breast screening invitation are being given the chance to make screening more attractive.
The NHS Tayside public health specialist with responsibility for breast screening wants women to share what puts them off attending and what might make it easier for them to turn up. Dr Julie Cavanagh said that, even if women do not want to go for breast screening, she would still value their input which could help make the process easier for others.
Breast screening has been available across Scotland for 20 years, detecting breast cancer in more than 17,000 women in that time. One in four women across Scotland do not attend their breast screening appointment, which aims to detect cancer at the earliest possible stage and give women the best chance of survival.
In Tayside attendance is higher than the Scottish average, with 80.3% of women accepting the invitation to attend for breast screening last year.
“We are consistently running a bit higher (for attendance) than the Scottish average,” said Dr Cavanagh, adding that she wanted to be sure women were in a position to make an informed choice about going for screening and that access to screening was made as easy as possible.
Women from the Terra Nova, Taybank and Muirhead GP practices who have not responded to an invitation to attend for screening have been invited to share their reasons by attending a single meeting with other refusers to discuss what might work better.
“For the ladies who decide they really don’t want to go for screening, this is not about persuading them,” said Dr Cavanagh. “This is about looking at anything that is within our (NHS Tayside) power to make it easier for them to attend if they would like to.”
To mark 20 years of breast screening being available across all of Scotland, NHS Scotland’s Scottish Breast Screening Programme is introducing a new leaflet for distribution to eligible women. In a bid to ensure women have all the information they need to make a choice about breast screening, leaflets will be provided with the invitations to screening appointments and online.
Programme manager Karen Butler said, “The Scottish Breast Screening Programme invites women in Scotland aged 50 to 70 every three years for a free mammogram. The aim of breast screening is to detect cancers at an early stage, making them easier to treat effectively, and by doing so reduce mortality from breast cancer.
“It is important for women to have all the facts about breast screening and this new leaflet will support women in making an informed decision about going for a mammogram.”
Audrey Birt is director for Scotland at Breakthrough Breast Cancer and she said, “Early diagnosis is vital for increasing the chance of successful treatment and screening is central to this.”