Hi Kim nice topic of study well we here in india have trained palliative care nurses who are experienced and are important memebers of our palliative care team.They use their knowledge to communicate in simple and easy terms to alleviate patient sufferings with compassion.They are well informed and we have conferences and congresses and societies to update their knowledge in form of interacxtive meetings.

I would like to know what information are you looking specially..and ehy on palliative radiotherapy?

Thanks for that information Suvendu- I am about to undertake an MSc in Palliative care and come from an oncology background. I have always had an interest in the benefits of palliative of radiotherapy and thought it would be an interesting topic to explore from a nursing perspective.

Regards,

Kim

great..kim...goahead..will be happy to help you on any technical aspect

Dear Kim: Interesting topic. I would say that palliative radiotherapy is generally an underutilized treatment in palliative care. Of course depends on what the diagnosis is but especially for bone metastasis it is very effective and can be done in single fraction doses. This was accepted by Cochrane Collaborative as equivalent to multiple fractions and with less transfer trauma on the patients. However the availability of any RT in low and middle income countries is quite limited.

Best wishes, Stephen

Thank you Stephen for taking the time to answer.

I also agree that palliative radiotherapy is often underutilized and have also experienced that when it is offered it is often at too late a stage when the potential  benefit of radiotherapy was limited due to advanced stage of disease.

Nurses working with palliative patients should be advocates for their patients and communicate with the team  to ensure that maximum benefit can be achieved from radiotherapy. I believe nurses have an important part to play in the management of side effects and to ensure  that optimal pain relief, anti emetics  etc are provided pre treatment to allow the sessions to be tolerated as comfortably as possible

I hope to identify what  level of knowledge  nurses have of palliative radiotherapy in my research.

Kind Regards,

Kim

Dear Kim,

I work with nurses in the community setting. Our specialist palliative care nurses are knowledgeable on the side effects of radiotherapy and the management of symptoms. They are also able to advice the patient on what to expect, especially emphasis on the fact that it is palliation as opposed to cure. The understanding of what conditions would benefit from palliative radiotherapy and treatment limits is variable and depends on the professional background of the nurse. 

Generalist nurses working with palliative care patients are less knowledgeable and there is an identified need for training. I would be very interested in the outcome of your research, it will throw more light of some of my observations in practice.

Best wishes,

Kemi

Thanks Kemi for sharing your observations.

I will keep you updated,

Warm Regards,

Kim

Dear Kim

Good topic.  I would hope that nurses' knowledge of radiotherapy in general is improving, but in my experience there is huge variation in understanding.   For example, it is commonplace to hear senior palliative care nurses referring to patients being in receipt of "Radium" and "DXT", rather than radiotherapy.   A survey should yield very interesting results.

Wishing you the very best in your study.

Helen

Thanks Helen for your feedback and the encouragement!

Kim