Collaborative learning workshops to optimize integration of cancer immunotherapies in the community setting.

Abstract

10535 Background: The expanding armamentarium of immunotherapies available to treat patients with cancer poses a challenge to community practitioners. They need guidance around the practical issues that they must navigate to provide immunotherapy safely and effectively in their own communities. Methods: The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) implemented collaborative learning workshops focused on best practices for implementing cancer immunotherapies in the community setting with respect to care coordination, monitoring and management of immune-related adverse events (irAEs), and access to care. The workshops were held between April and June of 2018 in community cancer centers. A multidisciplinary steering committee including two medical oncologists, an oncology nurse, and an oncology pharmacist, led this initiative. The workshops started with a 45-minute open discussion section where the faculty posed questions to the learners to understand their specific institutional challenges. The faculty took cues from the initial discussion and focused the remainder of the education on addressing the challenges and barriers that were uncovered, rather than merely summarizing recent clinical data. The faculty discussed clinical case scenarios and presented clinical evidence for the various treatment decisions. At the end of the workshop, the instructors collaborate with the learners to draft an action plan for incorporating changes into their practice. Participants were surveyed at 3 and 6 months following participation in the workshop to report on the status of their action plans. Results: After participating in the workshops, almost 100% of the participants reported being confident in their ability to make changes in their practice. The responses of the participants to the post-activity assessment revealed a 11% relative increase in knowledge and competence and the participants were up to 14.7% more likely to receive evidence-based management with immunotherapies based on effect size calculations. At the 3-month follow-up, the participating sites had already implemented over 30% of the action items listed in their plans and at the 6-month follow-up, 100% of the action items drafted by learners were implemented as planned. Conclusions: The collaborative learning workshops were successful in inducing changes in knowledge, competence, and performance among the intended target audience of community oncology practitioners.