Nurse-Led Education on Oral Chemotherapy Medications

Problem: Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death among women in the United States. Annually, around 264,000 breast cancer cases are diagnosed in women and 2,400 in men (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). According to the American Cancer Society, the risk of a woman in the United States being diagnosed with breast cancer in their life is around 13% (2022). Context: Along with a cancer diagnosis comes the need to introduce patient education about new oral chemotherapy treatments. As a treatment team member, the oncology nurse plays a vital role in this process. However, sharing evidence-based, comprehensive information becomes challenging before the patient commences treatment. Interventions: An MSN student-developed toolkit was introduced, and educational training was used targeting oncology clinic nurses to improve oral chemotherapy patient education. Measures: Nurses utilized an author-developed pre-and post-education experience survey to collect baseline and post-intervention data. Results: This MSN educational endeavor was introduced to ten oncology nurses to increase nurse knowledge by 20%. The data analyzed post-intervention showed an increase in nurse knowledge of 54%. Conclusion: The use of enhanced education by oncology nurses has been shown to improve comfort and knowledge levels and enables patients to self-manage potential treatment-related side effects of oral chemotherapy