NHS Lanarkshire is paying tribute to Cervical Screening Awareness Week by highlighting tips to make women feel more comfortable at tests.
Cervical Screening Awareness Week is running from June 20 to 26 and aims to highlight the importance of regular cervical screening for women’s health.
Advanced nurse practitioner Sooz McCrae has conducted thousands of smear tests in her career and has some cervical screening tips that may make your appointment easier for women who may be worried.
She said: “If you’re thinking ‘What can I do to make this less nerve-wracking?’, wear a skirt or a dress. You’d be amazed how much better they work as blankets than the little paper blankets we can give you.
“If you’ve been told before that you know what size of speculum works best for you, then tell the nurse that’s doing your smear test that – you have no idea how helpful that is.
“Another top tip is to remember that the nurse that’s doing your smear most likely has to have smears too, so we want to give you a good experience because we would want the same for us.”
Other tips to make you feel less nervous include asking for a nurse or doctor of a particular gender. This may make you feel more comfortable. Lying on your back may feel uncomfortable – you can ask to lie on your left-hand side with your knees bent.
Anyone aged between 25 and 64 in Scotland with a cervix is invited for a smear test – even if they have had HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine, the test only takes five minutes.
The test checks the cells from your cervix for HPV, which is the main cause of cervical cancer. If HPV is detected your sample is checked for cell changes.
This is the most effective and accurate method for finding out if you’re more likely to develop cervical cancer, so you only need to be tested every five years.
You are nine times more likely to survive cervical cancer when it is found at an early stage, therefore detecting any cell changes early on is important.
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