Symptom Management Excellence Initiative: Promoting Evidence-Based Oncology Nursing Practice

Abstract

Accessing and using the best evidence for cancer symptom interventions are prerequisites for nursing excellence. To incorporate evidence into direct care practice, staff at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute implemented the Symptom Management Excellence initiative to compare patients' and nurses' reports of their most frequent and highest priority cancer symptoms. Interdisciplinary teams then convened to design and test the feasibility of bringing symptom management evidence into clinical practice. This article describes how the initiative has successfully used patient-reported data, direct-care nurse input, research evidence, and expert opinion to systematically improve cancer symptom management.

Evidence‐Based Practice Beliefs and Implementation Before and After an Initiative to Promote Evidence‐Based Nursing in an Ambulatory Oncology Setting

“…Including mentors as part of a multi phased intervention to support nurses engaging in EBP has been found to lead to higher EBP‐B and EBP‐I scores in a pilot randomized control trial (Levin, Fineout‐Overholt, Melnyk, Barnes, & Vetter, ). The DFCI SPAWN process and use of the CIS to mentor nurses in EBP and facilitate EBP project engagement has been a consistent approach to ensure such mentorship (Boucher et al., 2013; Underhill et al., ).…”

“…During this process, the CIS mentors the clinical nursing team in all aspects of the EBP project. While working with the teams of unit‐based nurses, termed SPAWNing groups (Boucher et al., 2013; Underhill, Boucher, Roper, & Berry, ), the Cantor Center CISs recognized that a sound knowledge base was critical for applying EBP and was currently a limitation at the institute. Therefore, a plan to address the barriers to EBP implementation and organizational readiness was initiated.…”

Quality of Reporting Randomized Controlled Trials in Cancer Nursing Research

“…Evidence-based practice (EBP), which involves applying research results to clinical practice, is essential to excellent oncology nursing (Underhill, Boucher, Roper, & Berry, 2012) and can improve quality of life for cancer patients. The quality of RCTs has a substantial influence on providing reliable knowledge for EBP.…”

Association Between Quality of Life, Demographic Characteristics, Physical Symptoms, and Unmet Needs in Inpatients Receiving End-of-Life Care

“…Worse pain scores than in our study were reported by Underhill et al 41 43 Therefore, effective pain management should be one of the main goals of palliative care 6 and should be attempted as much as possible. The present study showed an association between more pain and lower quality of life in all domains of the functional scale.…”