The Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) is a professional organization of over 35,000 registered nurses and other healthcare providers dedicated to excellence in patient care, education, research, and administration in oncology nursing. The ONS mission is to promote excellence in oncology nursing and quality cancer care. The ONS vision is to lead the transformation of cancer care. ONS members are a diverse group of professionals in a variety of professional roles and practice settings. Registered nurses, other healthcare professionals, patients, and caregivers benefit from ONS research-based resources that are currently available without access restrictions on the ONS websites. The ONS Putting Evidence into Practice (PEP) program is a major initiative to provide resources for clinicians and others to facilitate access to and use of evidence to improve patient- and caregiver-centered outcomes in 20 topic areas, including Caregiver Strain and Burden. The PEP initiative distills and synthesizes current evidence for interventions to improve nursing-sensitive, patient-centered outcomes and packages research findings into resources for use at the point of care delivery. The purpose of this proposed study is to examine and evaluate the reach, effectiveness, and impact of a cancer caregiver-centered outcomes research electronic targeted messaging campaign to ONS members. The impacts of this project include the following: (1) Evidence regarding the effectiveness of targeted e-mail messaging as a way to disseminate evidence and improve practice behaviors can be applied in other key topic areas and by other groups. (2) Experience and development of methodologies to link demographics with web behavior, response to e-mail messages, response to surveys, and clinical behaviors can be used by the organization and shared with others to further efforts to improve quality care in other topic areas. Such approaches are used for marketing and sales but have not been applied routinely to improve healthcare practice. (3) Identification of additional resources and formats that may improve overall evidence resource accessibility and use in practice that can be used by ONS in other areas and to inform other organizations and groups. This project can directly impact the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Mission to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of health care for all Americans by increasing the use of research in practice.
Aim #1 : To develop and implement an electronic TM program for dissemination of ONS PEP evidence synthesis related to the topic of Caregiver Strain and Burden.
Aim #2 : To describe the reach and effectiveness of electronic TM regarding cancer caregiver-centered outcomes evidence resources. It is hypothesized that nurses in the TM condition will access relevant web- based Caregiver Strain and Burden resources more than those in the status quo condition.
Aim #3 : To compare the self-reported practice behaviors indicating use of cancer caregiver-centered research findings by ONS members who receive TM with members who are assigned to the status quo (control) condition. It is hypothesized that (1) those who receive TM will report greater use of caregiver-related evidence and report practice behaviors reflecting use more than those who do not receive TM and (2) this effect is mediated by accessing web-based PEP Caregiver Strain and Burden evidence resources.
Although Healthy People 2020 does not directly address informal caregivers, two of its developmental objectives are relevant. 'Cancer objective C-14 (Developmental)-Increase the mental and physical health-related quality of life of cancer survivors' (USDHHS, 2012a) can be directly impacted by informal caregivers. Also, since cancer is becoming a chronic disease and impacting an aging population, 'Older Adult objective OA-9 (Developmental)-Reduce the proportion of unpaid caregivers of older adults with disabilities who have an unmet need for long-term services and supports' (USDHHS, 2012b) demonstrates the significance of finding effective methods to disseminate research findings about informal cancer caregivers' needs and interventions to meet those needs.
