Pilot Curriculum for Continued Professional Development of Radiation Oncology Nurses

Purpose: Limited structured educational programs are available for the continued professional development of radiation oncology nurses. In this study, we evaluated a pilot curriculum focusing on clinical workflow and toxicity management for radiation oncology nurses at a single university -affiliated medical center network. Methods and Materials: Based on a previous multi -institutional needs assessment, a targeted curriculum on clinical workflow and toxicity management was developed, including didactic lectures, written disease -specific toxicity management guidelines, and standardized medication/laboratory order preference lists in the electronic health record. An anonymized survey was circulated to all participants pre- and postcurriculum. The survey was composed of Likert-type subjective questions and 11 objective knowledge -based questions (KBQs). Paired Likert-type data were analyzed using Wilcoxon signed ranks test. Objective question data were compared with the McNamar's mid P test. Results: Thirteen nurses participated in the pilot curriculum and 100% completed pre- and post curriculum surveys. After the didactics, nurses reported a significant increase in their understanding of the responsibilities of a nurse and overall process of care and their ability to explain computed tomography simulation, as well as their ability to assess, manage, and grade radiation -related toxicities (P < .01). There was significant improvement in the percent of correct answers on objective KBQs from a baseline of 52% to 80% after the curriculum (P < .01). Qualitatively, 70% (9/13) of nurses rated the curriculum as "extremely useful" and 30% (4/13) as "quite useful." Conclusions: Our pilot curriculum using a combination of in -person formal didactics, toxicity management guidelines, and electronic health record based order preference lists was well -received and showed promising results on KBQ assessment. This work may be used to guide the development of larger curricula for nurse onboarding and continuing education in a multicenter setting. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of American Society for Radiation Oncology. This is an open access article under the CC BY -NC -ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).