Cancer Research Breast Website dedicated to Sexual Health

Last Updated: Jul 9, 2003
Articles & News : Articles : Sexual Health

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Dr. Lorna Butler and her team launch a Canadian first – Cancer Research Breast website! http://www.cabreast.ca!  

Dr. Butler is the Associate Professor, School of Nursing at the Faculty of Health Professions & Assistant Professor, Department of Urology, Faculty of Medicine
Dalhousie University, Halifax , Nova Scotia. Her team is looking for people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer to respond to a confidential online questionnaire regarding sexual health after breast cancer.

(From http://www.cabreast.ca)

“Our team has worked with women who have breast cancer to learn about the effects of this illness on quality of life. One of the areas we are particularly interested in learning more about is sexual health.  We have developed a way to think about sexual health and to understand the things women told us they believed were important as part of their breast cancer care. The purpose of this work is to link with women who have breast cancer to help us design a questionnaire that can be used to help in the future to address the sexual health needs of women and their partners. We also believe this will help educate health professionals who must learn to respond to sexual health concerns of women with breast cancer.  

As a woman with breast cancer you are invited to share your story.  Most of the available sexual health information is about the physical side effects of breast cancer and its treatment. This educational program is designed to explore the cancer experiences and identify questions that you would have liked to have been asked or talked about when you were being treated for your cancer, and in the time since you have completed treatment.  

You will be guided through a web based, Internet program which will ask you to contribute your question(s). To do this you will be asked to think about your own experience, expectations, knowledge and health care support. As you write questions they will be electronically submitted to Dr Butler. Questions will be kept confidential. All questions developed will be reviewed by the team for use in redesigning the program and for other potential use in developing a sexual health questionnaire.  

The information obtained from this project will be used to redesign a sexual health educational module based on yours and other women's interpretations of what the impact of this illness means to one's femininity and sexual health. The questions will be kept in an item bank. Once we have several questions in the bank we will begin to redesign the  educational module. The outcome of this work will also be used to inform future health care aimed at promoting sexual health in people with breast cancer. This will be done by making recommendations based on the content of the questions in the bank for policy changes in the attention government and universities give to teaching cancer in present curriculum and care delivery by staff in the cancer centres.”

Check out  http://www.cabreast.ca/ and help educate healthcare professionals in how to respond to sexual health concerns for those diagnosed with breast cancer.

Have comments about this article? We'd love to hear from you. Please email us at abcn@abcn.ca!