The oncology nursing development project: Background and implementation

Abstract

The oncology nursing development project was implemented to facilitate the teaching of cancer care to nurses at the pre-registration level. Since the project involved the implementation of change, an action research design was employed. As a first step an assessment of the cancer content of pre-registration nurse education programmes in every general and sick children's training hospital in Ireland was undertaken. This demonstrated that those involved in teaching the cancer content of pre-registration nurse education programmes wanted to be updated in various different aspects of cancer care. As a result of these findings, a directory of cancer-related educational resources was developed and distributed to all schools of nursing. In addition, a learning needs assessment was undertaken to determine which aspects of cancer care should be addressed in a ‘Training the Trainers’ programme. This assessment was used as a basis to develop such a programme, which was implemented and subsequently evaluated. The majority of the participants indicated that they found the programme helpful and requested further education in the area of cancer care. The major strength of this project was that it was implemented nationally, which means that potentially all newly registered nurses in Ireland will be better prepared to care for cancer patients.