The documentation template has enhanced the quality and safety of practice at the authors' institution and provides a framework for other nursing units when initiating immunotherapy care. .
In response to this trend, a team was developed to plan and implement a Quality Improvement (QI) project addressing the process for administration and drug monitoring for patients receiving these drugs by implementing the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) model for QI. The IHI model utilizes the Plan-Do-Study-Act process in which a series of small tests of change are implanted to achieve desired results. The team established the standard nursing practice as administration of tacrolimus or cyclosporine through the white lumen of the tunneled CVC and lab draws for drug monitoring through the red lumen of the tunneled CVC. BMT nurses were informed of the new standard practice during twice daily safety huddles. Nurses were instructed to remember the standard as "red for blood" meaning to draw from the red lumen. Since implantation of this standard practice there have been zero reported line contaminations.
Background: The lack of a validated symptom assessment instrument in Spanish for patients with cancer and heart failure (HF) can affect the care and impede the recruitment and participation of Spanish-speaking patients in clinical trials. Spanish is the second most common language spoken by the largest and most rapidly growing racial/ethnic minority group in the United States. To bridge the language barrier and improve symptom management in Spanish-speaking patients with cancer and HF, the MD Anderson Symptom Inventory-Heart Failure (MDASI-HF) was translated to Spanish (MDASI-HF-Spanish). Aim: To validate the MDASI-HF-Spanish symptom assessment instrument. Methods: Following standard forward and backward translation of the original and previously validated English version of the MDASI-HF, a cognitive debriefing with nine native Spanish speaking participants was conducted to evaluate the participants' understanding and comprehension of the MDASI-HF-Spanish. To examine the comprehensibility, acceptability and psychometric properties of the translated instrument, the MDASI-HF-Spanish was tested in a convenience sample of 50 Spanish speaking patients with a diagnosis of cancer and HF. Evidence for the psychometric validity of the MDASI-HF-Spanish was demonstrated via its internal consistency reliability and known-group validity. Results: Overall, the participants had no problems with the understandability, readability, or number of questions asked. The MDASI-HF-Spanish subscales showed good internal consistency reliability, with a Cronbach's coefficient alpha of 0.94 (13 core cancer symptoms), 0.92 (8 heart failure symptoms), and 0.90 (6 interference items) respectively. The MDASI-HF-Spanish was able to differentiate the functional status between patients based on the New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional classification. Conclusions: The MDASI-HF-Spanish is linguistically and psychometrically valid with ease of completion, relevance, and comprehensibility among the participants, and it can be a useful tool for clinical management and research purposes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.