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Point of care e-learning for cancer health care professionals

Editorial and opinion

Issue 6, December 2010

eviQEd is a Cancer Institute NSW program providing cancer health professionals with online/blended point of care educational activities and programs to standardise and implement best clinical practice.

Designed to run in parallel with eviQ, the modules provide point of care, safety-focused learning programs that attract CPD points. The Cancer Institute NSW will provide quality learning programs for other health care organisations to access and embed within their education programs at a local level. This will enable clinicians' grades to be captured by the employer's learning management system.

The modules blend e-learning with other learning and assessment processes including clinical learning and skill assessment, workshops and simulations.

The following core criteria guide the selection and prioritisation of learning topics:

• Supports eviQ in its 'point of care' focus.
• User focused.
• Promotes safe practice.
• Efficiency and standardisation.
• Support key national cancer education initiates such as EdCaN and Cancer Learning.

Purpose

eviQEd is focusing on clinician-led development of e-learning programs for cancer health care professionals.  The e-learning is either stand alone or blended with other collaborative and clinical learning activities to support practitioners in their provision of best evidence at the point of care. eviQEd supports eviQ in its 'point of care' focus, is contextualised to the health care setting to support authentic learning and promotes safe practice in various aspects of cancer health care.

Method

Phase 1 spanned July 2009 to September 2010 and focused on establishing governance,  IT infrastructure,  a clinical content development group and processes to enable eviQEd to service NSW Health and beyond. Pilot testing in two Sydney metropolitan cancer care centres was undertaken.

Results

Governance

Key results to date include a functioning governance structure consisting of an advisory committee and clinical and e-learning education expert advisory panels.

Module development progress

Chemotherapy administration program

Acknowledged as an aspect of cancer nursing practice that significantly impacts on staff and patient safety as well as quality patient outcomes, this is a procedure that requires attainment of competence prior to independent practice.

This is a modulised program focusing on all aspects of administering chemotherapy to patients with cancer. The program includes competence assessment at the completion of all modules and consists of e-learning resources and assessable activities along with other blended learning activities such as a face to face workshop, clinical learning and skill assessment. Workshop and clinical learning facilitator guides and skill assessment forms are also provided.

Module 1: 'Safe Handling of Cytotoxic Drugs' and Module 2: 'Oral Cytotoxic Drug Administration' will be trialled in selected clinical settings in October 2010 with release scheduled for November 2010.

Cancer nursing practice modules

These modules are designed for nurses new to cancer nursing practice and aim to equip nurses with cancer nursing specific competence as a foundation for effective practice. The modules are contextualised to clinical settings as well as the nursing role to facilitate the transition process.  The first modules under development are targeting the Acute care cancer nursing clinical setting.

The modules focus on effective assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation of cancer specific nursing topics hence, competence assessment is a requirement of most module topics.

The Managing cancer pain for acute care nursing module is currently being trialled in three acute care cancer specific settings with the intention of its release in December 2010.

Other modules currently under development include: Managing febrile neutropenia and neutropenic sepsis; Acute care cancer nursing practice and Discharge planning for patients with cancer.

Medical oncology orientation programs

There are two medical oncology orientation programs.  The basic physician trainees program aims to equip registrars with the basic skills required to navigate their way through a term in oncology; and to provide effective supportive care to patients receiving chemotherapy.  The advanced trainee program is focussed on safe prescribing of chemotherapy.

Both programs support the implementation of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia national guidelines on the prescribing of chemotherapy. Follow up teaching and reinforcement or learning objectives is provided via a 'SpacedEd' course which is a novel program of ongoing testing and learning delivered by email.

Currently two modules are being trialled. The Basic Trainee Program is trialling the 'Prescribing for supportive care' module while the Advanced Trainee Program is trialling a 'Prescribing chemotherapy' Module.

Conclusion

Initial results demonstrate eviQEd is a viable platform for the delivery of standardised point of care learning programs for cancer services.

Phase 2 will focus on completing the development and implementation of modules for medical and nursing orientation programs as well as implement the chemotherapy administration training program.