Walther Advanced Cancer Initiative

Funding Source: Walther Cancer Institute & Michigan State University

Project Period: July, 2000 - December, 2002

Project Coordinator: Greg Cline, PhD

The goal of the Walther Advanced Cancer Care Initiative was to measure the affect of selected nursing interventions on the quality of lif3e of advanced cancer patients. To achieve this goal, MPHI-CDMTR worked with university-based researchers to develop a custom software product that guided nurses through a structured intervention process with cancer patients during chemotherapy visits and allowed the nurses to simultaneously enter the study data. Symptoms that were severe enough to warrant intervention were flagged by the software, which also provided the nurses with lists of evidence-based intervention strategies specific to each symptom, then recorded the strategies used at each visit. MPHI-CDMTR produced user manuals and technical documentation for the software, trained the nurses to use the software, then provided technical assistance to the nurses as needed.

MPHI-CDMTR was responsible for collecting all of the study data from each of the pilot cancer treatment centers located throughout the Midwest, and transfer it into a relational database. Once the data were accumulated, MPHI-CDMTR conducted a series of data quality assurance checks and conducted a series of exploratory analyses. All analyses conducted were the result of on-going project meetings with researchers at Michigan State Univeristy and Indiana University.

Project Type: Research