Creating Individualized Symptom Management Goals and Strategies for Cancer-Related Fatigue for Patients With Recurrent Ovarian Cancer.
Teresa L Hagan, Janet A Arida, Susan H Hughes and 1 others
PMID 27333127WHAT IT FOUND
Forty-seven women with recurrent ovarian cancer and fatigue set goals around family, valued activities, physical activity, and daily tasks.
With a nurse, they refined energy conservation, walking, and talking with the team, then adjusted strategies over weeks.
Key findings
01Women’s fatigue goals centered on enjoying time with friends and family, doing things they enjoy, having energy to be physically active, and keeping up with what they needed to do.
02Participants wrote 358 unique fatigue strategies, averaging 7.6 per person; the most common were conserving energy (98, 27.3%), increasing activity (53, 14.8%), and talking with the health care team (47, 13.1%).
03The nurse-guided individualization process asked women to imagine how strategies fit their lives, recall helpful past activities, balance doing too much and too little, and identify supporters, with strategies adjusted over several weeks.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only 47 women from the nurse-delivered arm who chose fatigue and completed a care plan were analyzed. The women had recurrent ovarian cancer, so their goals and barriers may not parallel those of other patient populations. The study did not evaluate whether the goals, strategies, or level of individualization improved fatigue or other symptoms. The data could not separate the unique contributions of the nurse and the participant. The analysis relied on written care plans and message-board examples rather than direct observation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that nurse-delivered symptom management reduces cancer-related fatigue. The analysis described goals and strategies in completed care plans and did not evaluate whether the plans improved fatigue or other symptoms.