Abstract CN32
Background
The University Hospital Ghent Cancer Center offers specialised cancer nurse-led support for cancer care services in the hospital to optimise comprehensive care and psychosocial support for patients with cancer and their loved ones. Beside face-to-face consultations this includes telephone and e-mail helpline services answered by specialised cancer nurses. These services offer general and specific cancer care information, education and psychosocial support. For specific questions, this service offers comprehensive triage and referral to other members of the multidisciplinary cancer care team or specific care services. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic face-to-face consultations where scaled down to protect all patients.
Methods
The observation period was from March to May 2020 during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. A team of specialised cancer nurses are in charge of the nurse-led support in the hospital. The rapid response from the hospital task force supported and made it possible to contact patients by telephone or conference call, in the hospital or through home-based work situation. The observations were evaluated using the registrations in the electronic patient file.
Results
During the observation period nurse-led face-to-face consultations where in total reduced with 28%. The fall backs in contacts was noted in all types of cancer. We observed reduced contacts during hospitalisation (-7%), outpatient clinic (-8%) and consultations (-12%). The lowest fall back was observed in face-to-face support during radiotherapy (-1%). In response of reduced in hospital activities we observed a significant increase in telephone contacts (+26%).
Conclusions
In addition of face to face nurse-led consultations, telemedicine and E-health tools could provide cancer patients a safe way to continue receive nurse-led support providing information, education and psychosocial support, especially during a pandemic. Unfortunately, telemedicine and E-health protocols in cancer care are often absent or under-developed. To provide evidence based, high quality nurse-led telemedicine more research and development is needed to implement comprehensive E-health cancer care protocols for nurses.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
The authors.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.