A number from 2021, and a student who has not yet been screened

Cervical cancer is treated here as still a major cancer in Korean women. In the 2021 national cancer registry, the age-standardized incidence was 7.4 per 100,000, up from 7.0 in 2017, a rise of about 5.7 percent. Those figures are left with the 2021 release. The case study says overall incidence in the country has been falling, while prevalence in women in their fifties and older has risen a little, and it reads that shift through thinner early screening, a stalled HPV vaccination rate, and an ageing population.

The cause, as set out here, is infection with human papillomavirus, most often through sexual contact. High-risk types, especially 16 and 18, can, if they persist, move over years from abnormal cell change, through cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, to invasive cancer. An infection can also be brief and clear on its own. Average HPV infection among Korean women is given as 15.5 percent; among university women, figures of 30 to 50 percent have been reported. In Kwon Yeong-eun’s 2014 master’s thesis at Kosin University, university women’s average correct knowledge of cervical cancer was 46.8 percent, and of HPV infection 31.3 percent. Those shares are left with 2014.

The teaching case is a twenty-year-old university student. She has had sexual experience, has never been to a gynecologist, has never had a cervical-cancer screening, and has not had an HPV vaccine. The nursing work named for her is assessment, education, and counseling, with a clear place for the vaccine as a primary way of lowering the chance of high-risk infection, and for a first Pap smear. If a Pap smear is abnormal, HPV DNA testing, colposcopy, and a biopsy are listed as the next steps. The case study does not give her a stage.

What the stages ask of a nurse

In stage 1 the cancer is still in the cervix. There are often no particular symptoms; it may be found after bleeding following intercourse, or after a rise in vaginal discharge. Treatment depends on the size, on how far it has gone, and on whether the patient plans a child. If the cancer is very small, only part of the cervix may be removed, or a cone-shaped excision used. If it is larger, or the uterus must be taken out entirely, a hysterectomy is needed.

In stage 2 the cancer has gone beyond the cervix, to the upper vagina or the tissue around the uterus. Bleeding outside menstruation, pain with intercourse, and discomfort on urination may appear. The combination used most often here is radiation — from outside and from inside the uterus — joined to chemotherapy, usually cisplatin. Nursing diagnoses named at this stage include the risk of side effects from treatment, a thin knowledge of the drugs, and activity limited by fatigue.

In stage 3 the cancer has spread more widely: to the pelvic wall, the lower vagina, or tissue around the kidney. Swelling in the legs, low back pain, and bladder or bowel symptoms may come with it. The same pairing of chemotherapy and radiation is used, but the field is wider and the symptoms more mixed, so the nursing has to be closer. In stage 4 it has reached distant organs — the bladder, the bowel, the liver, the lung — and there may be blood in the urine or the stool, weight loss, deep fatigue, and pain. At this stage, the case study says, the work is less a hope of cure than an easing of symptoms and of daily life. The diagnoses named include chronic pain, cancer fatigue, depression or a sense of helplessness, and a lowered quality of life; the work includes regular pain assessment, counseling that helps a feeling be spoken, and a care of nutrition and of sleep.

A practicum with a woman in her fifties

Separately, the write-up turns to a practicum centered on a woman in her fifties who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer, after chemotherapy and after surgery. The two rooms are not treated as the same person. An admission date of 22 July 2025 appears on a nursing form in the same file; it is left with that form, and is not joined here to the twenty-year-old student.

What stayed with the writer was not only a check of temperature. In a state of lowered immunity, keeping infection away asked for close watching, careful hand hygiene, and teaching the patient. Pain after surgery was not only a matter of giving an analgesic. It asked for an assessment tool, for an ear turned toward how the woman described the pain, and for practical help such as supporting the abdomen or pacing movement.

The practicum’s close is that nursing, here, has to hold the body, the feeling, and the level of knowledge together, or it is not yet nursing in the sense the writer wanted to keep.

What the two rooms are for

One room is a student who has not yet been screened, and who can still be reached by a vaccine and a first appointment. The other is a woman already in treatment, for whom the work is infection, pain, and being heard. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Case study of cervical-cancer nursing, by stage, with a teaching case of a twenty-year-old university student and a practicum with a woman in her fifties (Korean source page).
2. National Cancer Registration Statistics, 2021: age-standardized incidence 7.4 per 100,000, up from 7.0 in 2017. National Cancer Information Center, cancer registration statistics.
3. Kwon Yeong-eun, “University women’s knowledge of cervical cancer and HPV infection, and their intention toward prevention,” master’s thesis, Kosin University, 2014 (knowledge figures of 46.8 percent and 31.3 percent are left with that account). Average HPV infection among Korean women, 15.5 percent, and reports of 30 to 50 percent among university women, as given in the case study.
4. Lee Hyeon-ju, University of Ulsan, 2017, on a risk index for pelvic lymph-node metastasis in stages IA–IIA. Jeong Jae-uk, Chonnam National University, 2012, on adjuvant radiation after surgery in early cervical cancer. Cisplatin, as named for combined treatment in stage 2.

Last updated: 14 November 2026