ABSTRACT

Purpose:

Evaluate the studies which are related to breast cancer in terms of the researchers, study type, sample type and subject areas and were carried out between 2000 and 2009 in Turkey.

Patients and Methods:

The study data was gathered from the medicine and nursing databases, thesis screening,congress books, Turkish online published journals. 109 studies in which at least a nurse or a midwife researcher and was involved were included in this study.During analysis of the data, SPSS 14.0 was used.

Results:

The data was gathered from online journals 65% from the thesis’s 26.6%, and from congress books 8.3%. There was an increase in studies since 2005. However, this increase is not statistically significant (fisher x²=13.51, p>0.05). When the type of research was examined 74.3% of the studies were descriptive, 24.8% were experimental or semi-experimental and 0.9% was methods-based. When researchers profile investigated more studies were performed by academician nurses and midwives (88.1%) than the nurses and midwives working at the clinic (11.9%) and this result was statistically significant (fisher x²=4.79, p<0.05). The studies were evaluated in terms of the research subjects and listed in the order of 33.9% breast cancer, 25.7% breast self examination (BSE), 24% health-belief model, 9.2% mastectomy, 5.5% other screening tests and 3.7% breast cancer risk factors.

Conclusion:

The studies regarding clinical practice of the nurses are inadequate in Turkey. Therefore nurses, midwifes and academicians should be encourge to work in clinical studies and should guide them and let them put evidence-based results into practice.