InfuBlog

Patient education….

Patient education is an important part of the nurse’s everyday role, but is often left as the last thing after all of the technical details have been completed.  I learned a long time ago that if I took a few minutes to educate the patient first it actually saved me a lot of time in the long run.

Patient education is even more important when we send patients home with a cytotoxic medication running though an IV pump.  It scares me to think about the responsibility I am giving a person that has no medical background, not to mention the fear of the patient and families.

Over the years I have heard many things about home infusions from patients.  Patients have called or come back in to the clinic because they have burned through their line with a cigarette, the cat chewed through the line and the most common – they dropped it when getting up.  After each of these interactions with the patient I would think back to the education that was provided to them.

What have we taught the patient about the medication/pump to help them get through even the worse situation?  What do they know about that cytotoxic drug that is dripping on the floor now?  Do they know what they need to do to keep themselves and their family safe?  Do they know who to call?

InfuSystem provides patient education regarding the pump and has a customer service hotline open 24/7 to assist patients.  The customer service line is staffed by Oncology Certified Nurses to help the patient problem-solve most issues.  This is very helpful not only for the companies/institutions that use InfuSystem, but also for the patient who has a line leaking at 2am.

Information about the medication and side effects is also important.  There are many places out there for the patients and us, as healthcare workers, to get the information.  At Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit (where I work) we use www.chemocare.com as our source of educational literature for patients.  This is a website provided by Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center funded in part by the Scott Hamilton CARES initiative.  Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center monitors the website and updates the information after FDA changes have been reported.

It’s so nice to be able to go to one place to get all of my educational needs met.  I know the website is updated and the information is at a reading level appropriate for most patients.  Not only do the sheets talk about what the drug is, how it is given and side effects, it also talks about self-care.  The self-care tips are a great resource for the patient that has very little medical background and can’t remember everything the nurse told them when they were in the clinic.

I will tell one brief story about the importance of patient education.  I had co-worker whose husband’s cancer relapsed and he needed a bone marrow transplant.  Now, this nurse and I worked together for many years in the infusion center.  She knew cancer and chemotherapy, but transplant was a little different.  Not to mention that she was scared to death that she was going to lose her best friend.  Often the staff didn’t teach her all the things about the treatments because she was an “oncology nurse.”  My friend was very scared and when it came to taking care of her husband and his post transplant issues she was often lost and would call for help.  She knew about cancer, she knew about chemotherapy and she knew about side effect management.  But she was unsure of how to take that knowledge and apply it to a transplant patient and even more so the man that she loved.  It was a struggle for her until the nurses stopped treating her like a nurse and started treating her like a wife and caregiver.

That story helps me remind people that when it is us or someone we love it really doesn’t matter how much we know or how much we do it every single day.  We still need to educate.  Think of you or your family member in that chair/bed the next time you are hooking someone up to chemotherapy and think, “What would I want to know?”.  Give the patients every educational tool you have available and help them learn about how to work with their treatment.

Remember, we are sending equipment home with people who most likely have no prior medical background.  This is a very scary time for them.  Continue to educate your patients and reinforce that education every time they come in.

About the Author:

Clara Beaver is a Clinical Nurse Specialist at Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit, MI and has been in the Nursing field for more than 15 years.  Clara is an Oncology Certified Nurse and has held a variety of positions from Staff Nurse, Infusion Nurse, Homecare Nurse, Camp Nurse and Nurisng Faculty.  Clara serves on the Customer Advisory Board for InfuSystem.