Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Brachytherapy is a critical component in the treatment of gynecologic malignancies. Nurses are heavily involved in the specialized care of brachytherapy patients. They provide direct patient care, care coordination, and often leadership within their teams. Nurses also provide brachytherapy education to patients, new hires, and others caring for these patients throughout the greater healthcare setting. Brachytherapy nursing resources have historically been extremely limited, creating difficulty for nurses to learn or teach others. Material that exists typically is designed for physicians and physicists. This tremendous gap in nursing education has led to incomplete learning, difficulty teaching others, increased safety concerns, lack of confidence, and lack of support or networking for brachytherapy nurses. There has been no centralized location for brachytherapy nursing educational resources or networking to date.
Methods This is a large educational quality improvement project. Networking efforts began and detailed needs assessments were peformed. This data helped identify top themes to address first in this greater educational endeavor.
Results After many discussions with medical societies and industry, brachytherapy-specific nursing educational content was given a platform for the first time. This content is growing and includes virtual symposiums, webinars, checklists, tip sheets, sample competencies and guides for new nurses. This project has been incredibly successful and well-received. Brachytherapy nurses now have a global community.
Conclusion/Implications Brachytherapy is an irreplaceable component of gynecologic cancer care. Nurses now have more brachytherapy-specific educational resources and a community for the first time. This will certainly lead to increased knowledge, increased safety, and hopefully development of future best practices.