ORLANDO—Despite the need for nurses with specialized oncology knowledge to care for the growing population of cancer patients and survivors, few graduate oncology nursing programs currently exist. A collaboration between The Ohio State University Comp rehensive Cancer Center The James Cancer Hospital (OSUCCC-James) and the university’s College of Nursing (CON) has been established to help fulfill the need for nurses with specialized oncology education.
The collaboration between the cancer center and the college, described in a poster presented by Deborah Hanes, RN, CNS, and her colleagues, has resulted in a graduate oncology nursing program and an oncology clinical nurse specialist internship. The graduate nursing program will provide curriculum and clinical practicum sites by the CON and OSUCCC-James. The internship will train registered nurses with at least 3 years of experience as a registered nurse to become oncology clinical nurse specialists. Interns will be full-time employees of OSUCCC-James and will pursue part-time study following the CON curriculum; program participants will receive tuition reimbursement.
The framework for all educational experiences will be the cancer continuum, with emphasis on survivorship. Both the graduate program and the internship are based on adult learning theory. Students’ success rates on the Advanced Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist examination will be one measure of the program’s success.
The developers of the program anticipate that it will boost oncology recruitment and retention, and that patients will benefit from care based on graduate level oncology nursing education
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