Cancer Control Research
1R43CA094695-01
Goldstein, Mark K.
CLINICAL BREAST EXAMINATION FOR WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES
AbstractDESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Proficient clinical/manual breast
examination (CBE) is an effective and accepted breast cancer screening tool
that remains inaccessible to a large population of women with physical
disabilities. There are no standards for training clinicians to conduct CBE with this population of women and few resources for screening them. This
research project is designed to investigate and validate the elements required
for effective manual breast examination with women who have functional
limitations and to incorporate those procedures into the MammaCare Clinical
Learning System. MammaCare is a validated, skill-based training program and is
a recognized standard for teaching clinicians how to conduct proficient CBE. In
this Phase I research project, women representing a range of physical
disabilities will be given CBEs by nurses or physicians who are MammaCare
Specialist trainees using an experimental video protocol developed by
participants, project staff, and consultants. The project is designed to
determine whether the experimental training protocol produces proficient
clinical breast examination with women who have physical disabilities, If
successful, this project has the potential to improve breast cancer screening
for many of the 16 million American women whose access to CBE is limited.
PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: A validated, skill-based system for clinical breast examination of physically disabled women could fill a training gap for nurses and physicians in thousands of U.S. medical schools, nursing schools, public and private clinics, and breast centers.
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