The role of oncology nurse navigators in the outcomes of surgical patients with head and neck cancer.
Debora Costa Miguel Gobo, Rossana Veronica Mendoza Lopez, Adriana Marques Silva and 1 others
PMID 41370527WHAT IT FOUND
Head and neck cancer patients followed by oncology nurse navigators reached multidisciplinary assessments sooner, adhered better, had surgery sooner and fewer emergency visits, though hospital stay did not differ.
Key findings
01Navigator patients waited two days for speech therapy and psychology and 1.37 days for social work; controls waited 30 days, 25.6 days and 33.64 days.
02Adherence was better in the navigator group, with 30 patients versus 51 patients, in groups of 40 and 120.
03Emergency visits were less frequent in navigator groups: 28% of intervention surgery patients versus 81.3% of control surgery patients, and 33.3% of intervention clinical patients versus 77.8% of control clinical patients.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was retrospective and observational, so it cannot prove that the navigator caused the differences. The navigator group was small, with 40 patients, and the paper says the pandemic reduced referrals. Navigator care included several linked actions at once, including nursing consultation, referral to the multidisciplinary team, appointment tracking, active search and Tumor Board discussion, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated. Some outcomes were null, including length of stay after surgery and calls to the Hello Nurse service. The text and Table 1 give different CT scan waiting times. The paper did not name a single primary outcome among the many time, adherence and service use measures.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict of interest declaration appears in the supplied text; it notes ethical approval and that the work was a master's thesis.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that oncology nurse navigator care alone caused the shorter waits, better adherence and fewer emergency visits. The study is observational, the navigator group was small, and the navigator role bundled assessment, referral, appointment tracking, active search and team discussion, so the effect of any single component cannot be separated.