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Contact nurses' experiences of supporting patients following cancer treatment: A qualitative study
Sonja Marklund1, Senada Hajdarevic2, Stina Evars Lindgren1
1Umeå University, Department of Nursing, Umeå, Sweden.
Purpose:
Cancer rehabilitation guidelines emphasise the importance of providing individualised support to meet each patient's unique needs. Contact nurses have an essential role in providing such support. This study aims to explore contact nurses' experiences of supporting patients after cancer treatment.
Method:
This descriptive qualitative study was undertaken between February 2022 and January 2024. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 12 contact nurses who were purposively recruited from seven hospitals in northern Sweden. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach.
Results:
Three themes were revealed. Providing a sense of stability was achieved through creating order despite chaos, always being reachable and giving information to reassure patients. Creating trustful relationships involved being a confidant who assisted patients to cope and acknowledged their challenged existence. Navigating within limitations meant that contact nurses provided support while dealing with the unknown and facing their own inadequacy. The results highlight the ways that contact nurses support patients' self-management and well-being after curative cancer treatment.
Conclusion:
Contact nurses experienced that patients had multifaceted physical, psychosocial and relational needs following cancer treatment. They described their role as inherently solitary and struggled to uphold care ideals while lacking support themselves. It was challenging to provide person-centred support when patient needs were not clearly identified or expressed, or when the required support was beyond the contact nurses' scope of practice. The contact nurse role was extensive but lacked clarity regarding how it could be optimised to best support patients following cancer treatment.
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