Benefits and challenges perceived by patients with cancer when offered a nurse navigator

Abstract

IntroductionLack of communication, care and respect from healthcare professionals can be challenges for patients in trajectories of cancer, possibly accompanied by experienced fragmentation of the care, anxiety and worries. One way to try to improve delivery of care is additional help from nurse navigators (NN) offered in a predefined shorter or longer period, but patients’ experiences with this have seldom been investigated.AimsTo explore experiences of nurse navigation offered in a short period of a longer subsequent part of cancer trajectories by patients who can use the help on offer.MethodsThe NNs worked from one hospital department with patients in the transition between primary care and a university hospital before admission. A phenomenological-hermeneutical longitudinal study was performed from referral and until two months after discharge from the hospital. Semi-structured interviews with five patients who could use the help from an NN provided data for the analysis, which started open-minded.ResultsAffectional bonds were made to the NN and patients felt that they benefited from her presence and her help, which they requested until one month after discharge. They were disappointed and felt rejected when the contact to the NN stopped.ConclusionIn efforts to increase quality of care for patients with cancer we recommend an increased awareness of cultural areas within the healthcare system, which may be an impediment to good communication. Moreover, we recommend paying special attention to critical periods in cancer patients’ trajectories, as well as to the theory of attachment to supplement thoughts of continuity of care and coordination in the care for women. In short, it is fine to offer additional help to those who can use it, but in practice as well as in research we recommend awareness of how and when to stop the help, to prevent patients from feeling hurt.

How Communication Disharmonies between Patients and Nurses Can Affect Patients—A Qualitative Study of Illness Experienced from the Patients View

“…In this part of the interview, while making these emotional dots and the graph(s), most participants talked by themselves and in this way the elicitation technique took over the questions regarding the relation between experienced emotions and events in the healthcare system. All participants enriched the interview data with new information about a known event, with more events, and/or participants gave a better connection between time, concrete events and emotions (Thygesen et al, 2011b). The grid was verbalized, so the interviews could stand alone and were the only part for further analysis and interpretation.…”

“…No exclusions were made in order to optimize diversity in the sample. In the data collection period, a new elicitation technique was conducted and used in the last part of the interviews (Thygesen et al, 2011b). For this paper, we used a convenience sample of data from those participants who in the interview had participated in the elicitation technique.…”

“…This makes care challenging, as what professionals do and intend to signal is not always experienced the intended way by the patients (Thygesen et al, 2011b;Silverman et al, 2005).…”

Change in Preoperative Nervousness: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Gynecological Cancer Patients

“…for a nurse to be present, attentive, empowering and otherwise helpful towards the patient and to talk about what is on the patient's mind. Such support could be of a therapeutic nature, and gives the patient the opportunity to initiate a close bond with the healthcare professional [1] [15] [20] [21]. However, the time spent on the operating ward might be too short for patients to create a close psychological bond and obtain the optimum benefit from it [5].…”

The Cost of Cancer Care: Navigation Challenges to Participation in Phase I Clinical Trials

“…Patient Navigation programs are established to assist medical care management involving multi-specialty care and often include clinical research options (Ramsey et al, 2009;Thygesen et al, 2011). As Patient Navigation programs increase in prevalence, program models are evolving but often don't focus on the additional financial stress to the patient and family related to the more complicated care management required for clinical trials.…”