ecancermedicalscience

Short Communication

Nurse-led active surveillance for prostate cancer is safe, effective and associated with high rates of patient satisfaction—results of an audit in the East of England

25 Jul 2018
Estelle Martin, Satyendra Persaud, John Corr, Rowan Casey, Rajiv Pillai

Introduction: Active surveillance (AS) is an option in the management of men with low-stage, low-risk prostate cancer. These patients, who often require prolonged follow-up, can put a strain on outpatient resources. Nurses are ideally placed to develop advanced roles to help meet this increased demand—a model we have utilised since 2014. We set about to comprehensively evaluate our nurse-led AS (NLAS) programme.

Patients and methods: An audit of patient notes was carried out to assess compliance with trust and national guidelines. A questionnaire was designed to capture patients’ experiences of NLAS. This was piloted and then distributed to all patients in our NLAS programme. A second questionnaire was designed to assess the views of stakeholders within the department.

Results: Compliance with various aspects of local guidelines ranged from 88.8% to 100%. 143 patients are currently in the programme with a mean duration of AS of 37.03 months. 104 questionnaires were returned. Most of the patients were aware of the role of the nurse prior to their visit, and all were happy to meet with a nurse. All of the patients indicated their confidence in the nurse monitoring their prostate-specific antigen. Among those requiring further investigations, 85.3% were happy with the information they received prior to their tests. Overall, 96.2% were either very satisfied or satisfied with NLAS. All stakeholders held positive views about NLAS.

Conclusions: NLAS is safe and effective. Patients and stakeholders alike held positive views of the programme.

Related Articles

Eduardo Cazap, Benjamin O Anderson, Giuseppe Curigliano, Sandeep Sehdev, Fatima Cardoso, Ana Rita Gonzalez, Emad Shash, Cheng-Har Yip, André Mattar, Yanin Chavarri-Guerra, Miriam Mutebi, Yongmei Yin, João Victor Rocha, Ilaria Lucibello, Namita Srivastava
Atul Budukh, Sonali Bagal, Deepak Gupta, Sharyu Mhamane, Ravikant Singh, Burhanuddin Qayyumi, Abha Rani Sinha, Sanjay Kumar Singh, Satyajit Pradhan, Pankaj Chaturvedi, Rajendra Badwe, Sudeep Gupta
Calvin R Flynn, Roselle de Guzman, Olubukola Ayodele, Joan H Schiller, Katie Lichter, E Shelley Hwang, Lisa Fox, Gustavo Gosling, Claire Hopkins, Ken Rogan, Eduardo Cazap, Seamus O’Reilly
Tenazoa -Villalobos José Richard, Yan-Quiroz Edgar Fermín, Ordoñez-Chinguel Augusto, Prado-Cucho Sofia Leonor, Villoslada-Terrones Vladimir
Sidhart Misra, Zainab Yusufali Motiwala, Ayyaz Mulla, Jagatheswaran Chinnathambi, Danny Darlington Carbin