Congress Abstracts 2006

59

ONCOLOGY NURSES' ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES ABOUT INFORMING CLINICAL TRIALS PARTICIPANTS OF STUDY RESULTS. Susan Bauer-Wu, DNSc, RN, Monica Fulton, BSN, MBA, Eric Winer, MD, and Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA.

Growing evidence supports that cancer patients are interested in being offered the results of clinical trials for which they participate. However there is no standardization or requirements for clinicians or researchers to offer such information to patients. Better understanding oncology nurses' perspectives on this issue is important to the development and integration of formalized systems to share clinical trial results with patients.

To examine the attitudes and practices of oncology nurses with regard to informing clinical trial participants study results.

This study was guided by key principles of research ethics: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

A geographically dispersed sample of 125 oncology nurses who are members of the cancer cooperative group, Cancer and Leukemia Group B, completed and returned a mailed 31-item questionnaire designed and piloted for this study. Descriptive statistics were conducted.

62% of the nurses sampled do not offer results to patients and only 10.4% offer over half of the time. 73% agreed that most patients want to know study results and 83% agreed that patients should be offered this information. Benefits of routinely offering results to patients include: courtesy to patients, improve patient understanding of trials, improve patient satisfaction with care, and increase accrual to trials. Concerns about offering results to patients include: patients might not understand, entail too much money and time, patients can't act on this knowledge, negative emotional effects on clinicians and patients. 78% indicated willingness to offer results to patients, with 30% indicating they were less willing to do it for phase I/II compared with phase III studies. 9% would be less likely to enroll patients on trials if providing results was obligated, while 33% believe a policy obligating is a bad idea. Oncology nurses play an essential role in educating and counseling patients regarding clinical trials participation. Nurses need to be aware of their own attitudes and consider the implications if policies are put into place. If mandated, resources will be needed to account for the additional time required to appropriately provide this information to patients.