Oncology Nurses Workshop

I presented a workshop today for the Oncology Nurses of Malaysia. A nurse can become specialized in oncology here by taking a 6-month course. However, we found out today that most have not had the training and they are learning on the job. Since I am not a nurse or never have been, I thought a way to approach this was to go to the source, interview several women with expertise in patient care, breast cancer and genetic counseling. I audio taped interviews of Amanda Milam, RN,of Virginia Hospital Center, Arlington, VA. John's daughter, who has had experience as an oncology nurse and handled the issue of how to give comfort, show compassion and still maintain a professional presence in these very difficult situations. I interviewed Dr. Kathleen Errico, Chief Nurse Practitioner for Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and Peggy Walker, Genetic Counselor, School of Medicine, U of South Carolina (my sister). Each handled their interview differently and I put together Power Points to follow the 1/2 hour interviews.

I divided the nurses into 3 groups to listen to the interviews and then discuss the suggestions made in the interview, how the suggestions worked within their own hospital and what strategies could they develop to provide emotional support to their women patients. I would never had predicted the reaction that came from the interviews. I was told that most of the nurses would be shy and it would be difficult to get a discussion going. Wrong! The interviews generated so much discussion and with my facilitation skills, we were able to begin the discussion among these nurses of what is the best procedure to use with breast cancer patients. It was so animated that we extended the workshop and the nurses came to Maznah later and asked for more training sessions and several are interested in starting support groups within their own hospitals.

We heard from several that their hospitals do not have oncologists; others do not have mammography equipment, and all would agree that in general resources are lacking to help cancer patients have the best care. Several nurses said they were afraid of administering chemo because it could cause cancer if some spilled on their hands so to give chemo, they wear masks and hazmat suits. Wow!

I am so appreciative of Amanda, Kathie and Peg for helping with this workshop. Maznah asked me later if I could go to Kota Baru (near the border of Thailand) with her to talk with several hundred nurses. The need here is great for these kinds of training because the breast cancer Malaysian women get is very aggressive and 1/20 women get breast cancer, with about 40% the age of 40-49 or younger; of that group, only 30% survive. Most of these women are young mothers. So the project is very worthy and any activity like this generates more awareness and we hope, will get more women to come in sooner rather than later for their breast cancer checkups. You can find out more about this project at www.ipsas.upm.edu.my/Ca.Ed/

Here are a few photos of the workshop.