Developing, delivering and evaluating cancer nursing services: building the evidence base

The rate of evolution of cancer nursing in the UK has been remarkable over the past 20 years. Legislative changes and reform have provided the impetus for a range of developments in practice, research and education, and the push to achieve evidence-based practice has also driven the profession. There is a collective aspiration that all patients with cancer should expect to be supported by a cancer nursing service that is skilled, caring and competent. Demonstrating the value of nursing in terms of its effects on patients has never been so important. This project, commissioned by the Department of Health, was designed as a scoping exercise to assess the current state of the evidence base to support the development, delivery and evaluation of cancer nursing services in the United Kingdom. Three distinct elements were implemented concurrently to achieve this. The first was a review of UK literature centred around aspects of developing, delivering and evaluating cancer nursing and cancer nurses. The second was the development of a research directory profiling recently completed, currently under way and planned UK research concerned with cancer nursing and cancer nurses. The final element was a review of the organisation of cancer nursing services in England. This paper will report on the first two elements. The results of the third element will be published separately