Oncology Nurses and APPs Are More Than a ‘Bystander’ in Clinical Trials

Oncology nurses and APPs play a large role in recruitment for clinical trials and should stay informed on what clinical trial may be relevant to their patients, according to expert Erica Doubleday, MS, FNP-C, BSN, RN.

Doubleday stated in an interview with Oncology Nursing News that oncology nurses and APPs have a responsibility to keep potential clinical trials in mind when meeting with patients, considering clinical trials are recommended for most cancers, especially late-stage cancers.

Hearing the recommendation from a nurse or APP rather than or in addition to a doctor’s advice may lead to greater trust from patients, said Doubleday, who is the director of APPs Oncology Service Line Hematology and Medical Oncology at Ochsner Health System.

Transcript

The role we really play isn't just as a bystander or a sub-investigator. Our job really starts from the recruitment point. When we meet a patient, if we have a clinical trial, or we know of one that's within a relative driving distance for our patient population, we really need to be educating the patients: “Hey, there's this clinical trial. Do you want to see if you would qualify for it?”

…They still recommend clinical trials as one of the leading treatments for most of the cancers out there. Definitely for late-stage cancers, but there's early phase clinical trials that APPs can be a part of. Again, from the moment we meet the patient, we should be thinking clinical trial, and we should be knowing what is around us, what's at our institution, and even if it's not at our institution, if our patients are interested in it, we need to be able to refer them out to institutions that do have clinical trials.

Once they're on a clinical trial, we can absolutely do their clinic visits. We can monitor their side effects. We can report out to our nursing coordinators, who are the biggest help, at least at my institution, they do almost everything. They tell me what to do when it comes to a clinical trial with the patient.

And then educating the patients on the importance of knowing that they have options. So APPs, nurses in the clinical trial world are huge. I think patients also—it gets a reinforcement. Our physicians are going to say the same thing over and over to every patient. Sometimes it takes somebody else with a second set of eyes to say, “Hey, we really need to look at a clinical trial in the position that you're in. I think it would benefit you the best.”

I think sometimes patients get a little sidetracked with physicians because they think they have an agenda, but when we as APPs or as nurses really say that, they're like, “Wait, the physician doesn't have an agenda. They are looking out for the best interest of me as a patient.” So that reinforcement, I do think, is very helpful to the patients.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.