INDIANAPOLIS—Transplant patients may maintain a central line for 6 months to a year. At high risk for infection, they must know how to take care of their line. But when do they learn? Teachable moments can be few and far between, according to Indiana University Hospital nurses who made a video to help solve the problem.
Rather than focusing on the patient’s disease or treatment, their video focuses solely on central line care. The nurse researchers presented an evaluation of the project, entitled "Sooo Much to Teach, So Little Time," at a poster session of the Oncology Nursing Society’s 26th Annual Congress in San Diego.
Specifically, the goals of the project were to ensure that central line teaching occurred in a timely manner, to increase compliance and understanding of central line care, and to decrease patient and caregiver anxiety as well as staff frustration.
"We have a patient population that comes in for cyclophosphamide(Drug information on cyclophosphamide) mobilization," said Gerri Wensloff, RN, BSN, OCN, one of the authors of the evaluation of the video project.
Ms. Wensloff is clinical educator at the Adult Cancer Center, Indiana University Hospital, Clarian Health Partners. Her co-author was Linda Hamer, RN, BSN, OCN, at the same location.
"On the day their line is placed, patients get high-dose cyclophosphamide. They’re usually very nauseous and may get a lot of lorazepam(Drug information on lorazepam), and so there are not many teachable moments," Ms. Wensloff observed.
Caregivers are hard to catch, too. "Often, their family members just bring them in and take them home," she said. "So we found it was very difficult for our staff to get the teaching done and not feel like the patient was hurried through it."
