Abstract CN29
Background
Cancer nurses have a crucial role in the safe administration, management and delivery of cancer treatment. To gain knowledge on both patient- and occupational safety from European cancer nurses, a survey was conducted. Based on the findings, advocacy work is ongoing in order to clarify the need for clear guidelines and to implement guidelines and training on safe handling of hazardous drugs mandatory. In order to provide data on those issues, we have concentrated on the part of the survey focused on training, implementation of guidelines, the use of personal protective equipment and risk assessment.
Methods
EONS Advocacy working group developed a survey on occupational and patient safety. The semi-structured survey consists of two parts; one with 20 items on occupational safety (with the option of free-text comments) and one validated tool, Hospital Survey on patient safety, not analyzed here). The survey was translated into nine languages, and data collection was conducted between October 2019 to August 2020. A database was developed by the Regional Cancer Centre in Stockholm-Gotland, Sweden was dedicated to this survey; descriptive statistics were used to present the data, from this sub-sample.
Results
616 cancer nurses from 40 European countries responded. A majority of respondents, 87 % had access to guidelines on management and administration of cytotoxic drugs), but only 38 %, reported that those are fully adhered to. A quarter of the nurses, 26 %, reported that they do not have any formal training before administering cytotoxic drugs. On what type of personal protective equipment that are used, 16 % of the nurses report they use a full gown with arm coverings (that is the recommendation according to guidelines). In addition, regarding the use of a closed system transfer device, 20 %, reported “not at all”, 11 % – “sometimes” and 67 %, stated “always”. Regarding risk assessments for contamination (swipe tests of surfaces), 8 % reported that this is regularly performed at their workplace, however the majority, 71 %, stated that swipe tests are never performed.
Conclusions
In summary, guidelines, formal training as well as risk assessments are not fully implemented, putting nurses at risk when handling cytotoxic drugs.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
European Oncology Nursing society.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.