Female health-care providers’ advocacy of self-sampling after participating in a workplace program for cervical cancer screening in Ghana: a mixed-methods study

Figures & data

Table 1. Sociodemographic data of survey participants

Variable	n = 52	Range
Age in years (mean)	36	23–59
Profession Ward assistant Community Health Nurse Nurse Midwife Physician Assistant Doctor	7 21 13 6 3 2

Table 2. Sociodemographic data of interview participants

Variable	n = 10		Range
Age in years (mean)	41		28–59
Number of children	1.3		0–3
Profession Ward assistant Community Health Nurse Nurse Midwife Nurse and Midwife Physician Assistant Doctor	1 3 2 1 1 1 1

Table 3. Research foci, emerging categories and sub-categories

Research focus	Categories	Sub-categories
Motivation to participate	Taking the opportunity as a woman	Meeting the fear of cervical cancer Appreciating the non-cost involved
	Seeing the benefits as a health care provider	Wanting self-experience to authentically counsel patients Improving instructional skills
Experiences of the self-sampling process	Preferring self-sampling over clinician sampling	Feeling/anticipating less pain Appreciating not being exposed to others Valuing privacy
Workplace and community implications	Gaining knowledge/awareness regarding HPV and cervical cancer	Feeling more knowledgeable about HPV, its transmission and cervical cancer Improving aseptic techniques Improving referrals
	Becoming advocates for cervical cancer screening	Encouraging patients to go for screening Explaining to community members Sharing of experiences

Table

1. Where sample was taken: 1-Clinic 2-CHPS Compound 3-Home

2. Who took the sample 1-Self-Unsupervised 2-Self-Supervised 3-Health worker

3. If you took the sample by yourself, please indicate how easy or difficult it was to use the self-sampler for self-sampling? 1-Very Easy 2-Easy 3-Difficult 4-Very difficult

4. If you took the sample by yourself, please indicate how comfortable you felt collecting your own sample with the self-sampler? 1-Very ComforTable 2-Somewhat comforTable 3-Somewhat uncomfortable 4-Very uncomfortable 5-not applicable

5. If the sample was taken by a health worker, how comfortable was it? 1-Very ComforTable 2-Somewhat comforTable 3-Somewhat uncomfortable 4-Very uncomfortable 5-Not applicable

6. Prior to this screening, had a health professional ever taken your sample during a pelvic examination? 1-Yes 2-No

7. If you answered ‘Yes’, how comfortable did you feel when the health professional collected your samples at your last pelvic exam? 1-Very ComforTable 2-Somewhat comforTable 3-Somewhat uncomfortable 4-Very uncomfortable 5-Don’t remember

8. If the self-sampler works as well as going to the doctor, would you get checked more often, less often or about the same? 1-More often 2-The same 3-Less often.

9. If both sampling by speculum with brush and by sampling with self-sampler can determine your risk of cervical cancer equally, which one would you prefer? 1-Sampling with speculum and brush 2-Sampling with the self-sampler

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy provisions but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Datasets are available upon request from [email protected].