Outcomes sensitive to nursing service quality in ambulatory cancer chemotherapy: Systematic scoping review

Abstract 

Background

There is long standing interest in identifying patient outcomes that are sensitive to nursing care and an increasing number of systems that include outcomes in order to demonstrate or monitor the quality of nursing care.

Objective

We undertook scoping reviews of the literature in order to identify patient outcomes sensitive to the quality of nursing services in ambulatory cancer chemotherapy settings to guide the development of an outcomes-based quality measurement system.

Methods

A 2-stage scoping review to identify potential outcome areas which were subsequently assessed for their sensitivity to nursing was carried out. Data sources included the Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, the British Nursing Index, Google and Google scholar.

Results

We identified a broad range of outcomes potentially sensitive to nursing. Individual trials support many nursing interventions but we found relatively little clear evidence of effect on outcomes derived from systematic reviews and no evidence associating characteristics of nursing services with outcomes.

Conclusion

The purpose of identifying a set of outcomes as specifically nurse-sensitive for quality measurement is to give clear responsibility and create an expectation of strong clinical leadership by nurses in terms of monitoring and acting on results. It is important to select those outcomes that nurses have most impact upon. Patient experience, nausea, vomiting, mucositis and safe medication administration were outcome areas most likely to yield sensitive measures of nursing service quality in ambulatory cancer chemotherapy.

Keywords: Quality measurement, Outcomes, Chemotherapy, Nursing, Clinical nurse specialists, Ambulatory care