The Boston Cancer Pain Education Program (BCPEP) proposes to develop, implement, and evaluate a cancer pain education program for inner city patients and their nurses which takes into account barriers to effective pain management in this population. From a pool of 306 cancer car nurses within the Visiting Nurse Association of Boston (VNAB), the Boston City Hospital (BCH), and Mattapan Hospital (MH), 230 will participate in a workshop on pain management in inner city patients. Of these, 50 will be randomly selected to participate in an enriched educational experience including joint visitation and focus group discussion. The content of the program will include state-of-the-art pain management for cancer patients as well as information on the special issues involved in the care of inner city patients. Patients of the enriched group nurses (N=105) will be randomly assigned to receive a special education program which includes a culturally sensitive patient cancer pain guide (BCPEP guide) (N=35); a program which includes a literal translation f a standard guide put out by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute; and a program which includes no guide. Nurses will be evaluated using pre-, post-, and 9 month follow-up tests which assess knowledge and attitudes about cancer pain management in this population. Patients will be assessed using the abbreviated form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire at baseline, 1 week, and 6 week follow-up. Using repeated measures analysis of variance, we will compare enriched model, standard model, and no education nurses. Using repeated measures analysis of variance we will compare patients of standard education model nurses, patients of no education nurses, BCPEP guide patients, literal translation guide patients, and no guide patients. The long-term objective of this proposed effort is to develop and disseminate a cancer pain management education program for inner city patients and their nurses which will serve as a model for other urban areas and produce readily disseminated information for nurses and patients. A strength of this proposed educational effort is its multidisciplinary, multi-agency approach to cancer pain management across the care continuum for inner city populations.
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