A recent research paper suggests that the faith in cervical screening systems is “considerably less” in Ireland compared to Scotland following the scandal associated with the CervicalCheck programme. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) released a research bulletin on Thursday titled The effect of CervicalCheck scandal on public trust and accountability for interval cancers. In 2018, it came to light that a myriad of women diagnosed with cervical cancer were not made aware of their inaccurate smear test results that were supposedly clear and this withheld information lasted years.
The scandal unfolded after Vicky Phelan won a High Court case against a US laboratory outsourced by CervicalCheck, the national cervical screening programme in Ireland, to analyse the tests. The research aimed to study the effect of this scandal on public trust and the responsibility assigned for interval cancers, which are cancers diagnosed post a negative screening result.
Also, it implemented an experiment to measure the effect of new authorised informative materials that are partially aimed at debunking misconceptions through improved understanding about screening. The study was comparative, involving Ireland where the scandal surfaced and Scotland where it did not. Scotland was selected for its similar population and screening program.
Data was gathered from 872 eligible female participants ranging from 23 to 65 years old in Ireland, and 400 female participants between the ages of 23 and 64 in Scotland. The researchers found that “Trust in the screening system was far lower in Ireland than Scotland, indicating the detrimental effect of the CervicalCheck scandal on trust in screening.”
They discovered that “Irish participants saw the laboratories evaluating screening samples and the screening results with an especially low level of trust.” The research found that “In Ireland, in cases of observable abnormal cells in prior screening samples (false negative results) and advanced cancer stages, the screening programme was blamed more than in Scotland.” Prof Pete Lunn, of the behavioural research unit at the ESRI, stated that the research aimed to establish “a preliminary data set to assess the effect of the scandal.”
Professor Lunn articulated that the scepticism towards the system is “hardly unexpected”, noting that the scandal’s news lingered for a significant duration following the initial exposure of the controversy. “This indicates that the revised policies are operative, yet they haven’t mitigated the entirety of the fallout resulting from the scandal,” he further said.
After the scandal was revealed, Northern Irish public health physician Dr Gabrial Scally declared that due to an apparent lack of transparent governance and communication channels linking CervicalCheck, the National Screening Service, and the Health Service Executive management, it was inevitable that the screening system would “fail at a certain stage.”