Congress Abstracts 2006

13

SUCCESSFUL APPROACH IN DEVELOPING THE ROLE OF THE BREAST CARE COORDINATOR/NAVIGATOR IN COMMUNITY CANCER PROGRAMS: LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROJECT. Elaine Sein, RN, BSN, OCN^®, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Cheltenham, PA.

Breast cancer patients are the largest population of cancer patients seen in the community. Multidisciplinary Disease Management Programs are a goal of community based cancer programs in order to provide comprehensive cancer care and keep patients close to home. Breast Care Coordinators navigate patients from point of diagnosis through treatment to provide guidance with decision-making, education and support. Community Cancer Programs Breast Care Coordinators will have access to best practice models and disease management program development via education by a comprehensive cancer care network consulting group developed by Fox Chase Cancer Center.

The purpose of this project is to assist and support Breast Care Coordinators at varying levels of practice with role development through educational, clinical and operational updates. Secondarily, to increase quality of patient care, improve patient satisfaction; increase patient volumes and institutional revenue by decreasing out-migration of patients to competing centers.

The Breast Care Coordinators actively participate in quarterly meetings to address the group's goals and objectives. These include: strategies for program growth, benchmarking against standards for evidence based practice and quality improvement, development of patient educational compendia, provide disease specific education updates and collaborate on multi-institutional nursing research projects.

This project has been successful as evidenced by comparing goals and objectives with accomplishments. This has been validated through: sharing successes and roadblocks as they established their position in the breast program, resources for breast cancer patients, fact finding with ONS regarding possible certification credentials for Breast Care Coordinator, involvement in leadership roles within ONS Breast Care SIG, collaboration with Fox Chase Cancer Center on a benign breast cancer education study and plans for a regional breast cancer symposium targeting nurse coordinators /navigators for fall 2006. A Breast Care Coordinator tracking system was designed to capture patient satisfaction and quality improvement metrics and is currently being piloted.

The success of this project has broad implications for enhancing cancer care in the community. Community based cancer programs are using the Breast Care Coordinator model to develop other clinical coordinator roles for oncology disease management programs such as Gastroenterology, Lung and Gerontology.