The Effect of Educational Intervention on the Patient’s Willingness to Carry out the Immunochemical Faecal Occult Blood Test for Colorectal Cancer

BACKGROUND: There is now compelling evidence that screening for colorectal cancer may result in significantly reduced mortality. Screening tests for colorectal cancer are not systematically performed in Bulgaria. AIM: This article explores the effect of an educational intervention on the willingness of patients to participate in the screening for colorectal cancer with the immunochemical faecal occult blood test in the home setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A before-after design study of the effects of educational intervention comprising distribution of a brochure and one-to-one discussion with a GP. A self-administered, original questionnaire was administered before and after the intervention to 600 randomly selected patients in 40 general practices (15 patients per practice) in Plovdiv district. RESULTS: The intervention led to an increase with >20% of the patient’s knowledge of the importance of the test and on how to carry out the test. Statistical analysis indicated that there was an increase in knowledge after the educational intervention about the usefulness of the test (24.8% in males, 18.3% in females) and its performance (22.7% in males, 25.4% in females). CONCLUSION: The educational intervention has significantly influenced the patient’s awareness about the test’s usefulness and its self-administration. It improved the awareness by providing an easy access to information, thus fostering the active involvement of the patients. A strength of the intervention was the patient-centered approach in providing additional information through one-to-one discussions, and it ensured a higher quality of the preventive screening in the general practice.