Flowsheet documentation of chemotherapy administration and patient teaching

The use of a flowsheet to document chemotherapy administration is an established practice in many oncology settings. Traditionally, these flowsheets have focused on dates of drug administration, drug doses, and laboratory values. In an attempt to simplify documentation of nursing practice related to chemotherapy administration, sections on drug administration, patient teaching, and symptom management were added to the traditional chemotherapy flowsheet in our setting. Development of a standard of care for knowledge deficit related to chemotherapy and standardized patient-teaching materials allowed use of the flowsheet to document patient teaching. This standard also provided consistency and continuity in patient teaching. Additionally, the format of the flowsheet and the charted information has simplified data retrieval for quality-improvement monitoring of some aspects of care.