Breast cancer training drive at Dubai Hospital

About 100 healthcare staff at Dubai Hospital will undergo basic training in breast cancer detection in a bid to improve patients’ survival rates in the emirate.

“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.

“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 said.   

Eight out of 10 women who attend the hospital’s breast cancer clinic – the only one of its kind in Dubai – are diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease, according to official figures.

Doctors say that while advanced cancers are treatable, the later a tumour is detected the worse a patient’s chance of survival is.

The training scheme has been set up by the hospital’s Breast Cancer Awareness Committee and is part of a 12-month campaign to increase understanding about the disease.

Groups of up to 30 staff members will be taught how to perform and teach breast self-examination, the common signs and symptoms of disease, and what is involved in diagnosis and treatment.

These staff members will go on to educate the clinic’s female in-patients as well as all other women attending the hospital, through maternity services, emergency room and general out-patients clinics.

“There really is a negative cultural element to breast cancer here, and it’s one of the things we focus on,” said Nasseem Rouhani, master trainer/coordinator at Vital Voices, the international charity that is running the training.

“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.  

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