Men’s health beyond prostate cancer screening

With the recent increase in the male population’s access to healthcare services, family doctors working in primary care units are responsible for providing comprehensive healthcare to men and must be able to deal with gender and socio-cultural issues and with the demand for prostate cancer screening among this population. Their attitudes are fundamental to health promotion, as well as to quaternary prevention, by avoiding excessive diagnostic and therapeutic interventionism and unnecessary medicalisation. The motivation for conducting this study, which is the result of my master’s thesis, was mainly my clinical practice and the epidemiological relevance of this type of cancer. The objective was to analyse the approach to men’s health and, in particular, to identify the knowledge and attitudes of professionals regarding prostate cancer screening in three basic health units in Santa Cruz, in the western zone of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.