Papanicolaou Test: Quality of Smear Performed by Nursing Students

Abstract

Cervical cancer is prevented or healed if detected early but its impact on morbimortality depends upon not only the availability and coverage of the preventive test, but also the smear quality. The negligence on the latter can bring about false-negatives results, delaying its diagnosis and treatment. The aim of this study is to evaluate the Papanicolaou smear performed by nursing students and make a comparison with the Pap smears made by health care professionals. A hundred and twelve smears were analyzed in the same laboratory, fifty six of them performed by students and 56 by professionals (control group), collected in the same Health Unities and during the same period of time. The analysis showed a number of dissatisfactory smears higher than acceptable on the whole. However, in the control group, this percentage was significantly higher than those found in the study group, for the forty-year old women or elder. The absence of squamous-columnar junction's cells (SCJ) in the smear samples was the main cause of dissatisfaction. The authors recommend the revision of collection procedures and the repetition of a new collect whenever the SCJ cells were not appropriately visible in the smear.