Congress Abstracts 2005

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ONCOLOGY NURSING SOCIETY DEVELOPS LEADERS TO GO ABOVE AND BEYOND COMMUNITY. Bertie Ford, RN, MS, AOCN^®, Genentech Inc., San Francisco, CA, and Diane McElwain, RN, OCN^®, MEd, York Cancer Center, York, PA.

The opportunities for nurses to serve in leadership positions are phenomenal. The NSABP (National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project) developed a committee in 2000 with an oncology nurse as chair and oncology nurses among the committee members. Cooperative groups have long had nursing committees for oncology nurses involved in clinical research, but that is usually the only place. NSABP’s Diversity Strategic Planning Working Group is a unique opportunity for nurses to serve as leaders in a cooperative group setting.

The purpose of the Diversity Strategic Planning Working Group is to develop strategies to increase the accrual of minorities to the NSABP trials.

The Committee has been very active since its inception . . . we have developed a Resource list which contains a listing of materials, videos, publications, journal articles which serve a resource for the NSABP membership. Some of the resources come from ONS (multicultural toolkit, and the book: Cancer Prevention in Diverse Populations: Cultural Applications for the multidisciplinary team. We have educational symposiums at each meeting to educate the membership about diverse populations and highlight best practices of those who have been successful with enrolling minorities on clinical trials. We conducted a survey of the membership. Some of the things we assessed were: which minorites did they care for, strategies used in recruiting minorities, if they received education in terms of diversity, what needs did they have if any. We presented the findings at the NSABP group meeting. We plan to target institutions who have had a high percent of minority accrual to further drill down how they have been successful and try to transfer that success to other institutions.

This working group is around for the long haul . . . based on the survey . . . we will continue with the resource list, the best practices, and diversity education. We will also continue to utilize our nursing background and leadership skills to make this committee successful. The chair, an oncology nurse will defend the committee during our grant renewal.

ONS has many opportunities available for leadership development. Those of us who have utilized ONS resources, programs and projects have found use for them in an area outside nursing’s usual arena.