A third of women don’t go to their cervical cancer screenings – here’s how to make them more comfortable
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Eve Hewitt was nervous when she was invited to get her first cervical cancer screening done.
Living with Crohn’s Disease, Ms Hewitt told The Independent that the “baseline level of concern that all women have” was accompanied by concerns of her own vaginal scarring from previous surgeries.
“Am I a bit complicated?” she said she wondered of herself. “Is it going to be a bit tricky for the nurse? Is it going to be quite traumatic for me to go through that?”
Ms Hewitt isn’t the only woman with anxieties about the routine test, which all women in the UK are asked to book from the age of 25 to 64.
“When you’re looking up the photos of the instruments they use, they don’t look particularly inviting,” she said in reference to the speculums used to widen the vaginal walls during the test.
One in three women didn’t go to their cervical screenings when invited to by clinicians between 2023 and 2024, according to a gynaecological cancer charity tackling perceptions about the smear test.
Charity the Eve Appeal found in a survey that most women do not know they can make the procedure more comfortable for themselves through a number of requests.
The results of a YouGov survey commissioned by the charity found that 56 per cent of 1,100 surveyed women were unaware they could ask for their cervical screening test to stop at any point, 77 per cent didn’t realise they could ask for a smaller sized speculum to be used during the procedure, and 88 per cent didn’t know they could book a double appointment for more time.
Because of her experience with Crohn’s, Ms Hewitt said she was “quite inclined to book a double appointment for things if there’s availability anyway.”
“Having had Crohn’s for 20 years as of this year, I know how to talk to health care professionals so I was quite privileged from that point of view to understand I can ask for things to be different,” she said.
Ms Hewitt said she was lucky that her first experience of the procedure was with a nurse who “was really working with me”, which means she now knows whenever she has the procedure to book a double appointment and ask for a smaller speculum.
“By asking for these things, you’re not an inconvenience,” she concluded. “This is your procedure so make sure you’re taking control of what is right for your body.”
The Eve Appeal’s research comes as NHS England aims to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040 through cervical screening, which is thought to save around 5,000 lives per year in the UK, and the HPV vaccine, which cuts cases of cervical cancer by 90 per cent.
Seven ways to make your cervical screening more comfortable:
- Ask for a smaller speculum
- Book a double appointment
- Ask to bring a friend, family member, or carer with you for support
- Listen to an audiobook, podcast or music
- Ask if you can try a different position for cervical screening
- Ask for information on cervical screening in Easy Read or in your preferred language
- Ask for a female nurse or doctor to take your cervical screening
