What Does a Cancer Nurse Do?

Cancer is the most harmful disease to human health and life. According to the World Health Organization, more than 12 million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. China's third survey of all causes of death shows that the mortality rate of cancer in China is 135.88 / 100,000, which is a high level in the world, and it continues to increase. Because the occurrence of cancer is closely related to the social environment, family environment, psychological environment, eating habits and lifestyles, and human beings have not yet found a practical cure for cancer, care is very important.

Chinese name: Cancer care

Foreign name: Cancer care
Department: Oncology

Cancer Care Overview

With the development of medicine, cancer nursing has long become an independent specialty, and the number of nursing methods has been increasing and perfected. It has shown an indispensable force in improving the level of tumor treatment, reducing patient suffering, and improving quality of life. When human beings have not found a practical cure for cancer, cancer care is very important. Cancer care includes psychological care, diet care, palliative care, music care, pain care, and social support. They each have their own strengths and infiltrate each other. They have played a positive role in the treatment of cancer. In the process of cancer treatment, according to the specific situation, they can master it flexibly and let it play its due role. ^[1]

Cancer care

Cancer Care Cancer Care Methods

1. Cancer Nursing 1. Cancer Psychological Nursing

A large number of facts prove that the lifetime of cancer patients depends not only on the condition and medical measures, but also is closely related to the patient's own mental state. The survey results show that cancer patients have negative emotions such as denial, doubt, tension, pessimism, fear, despair, etc.

Cancer care Immune function has a significant inhibitory effect, which seriously affects survival rate and quality of life. Therefore, psychological nursing is very important for cancer patients, and it is also the core content of overall nursing. The quality of psychological nursing determines the quality of nursing. A kind attitude, professional skills, and a strong sense of responsibility are the foundation of psychological care. The nurse should establish a good nurse-patient relationship with the patient as much as possible, create a warm and comfortable living environment for the patient, unlock the patient's heart knot, and stimulate the patient. The desire for survival has made them out of their psychological turmoil and fosters a sense of psychological identity in close cooperation with medical staff. Due to differences in patients 'thinking levels, willingness to communicate, and understanding of tumors, to achieve spiritual communication with them, nurses must have a high degree of compassion, understand the laws of patients' psychological activities, use certain skills, and adopt corresponding methods according to the patient's situation . There are empathy, suggestion, enlightenment, collective psychotherapy, etc., which vary from person to person and are targeted. ^[2]

2. Cancer Care 2. Cancer Diet Care

Due to cancer, patients' metabolic disorders, negative nitrogen balance, low immunity, reduced white blood cells, hair loss, etc., eventually become cachexia. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out diet care for patients and improve their nutritional status. Nurses should take various methods to encourage patients to eat, change recipes frequently, change cooking methods, pay attention to the mix of color, aroma, and taste, give a light diet high in calories, high protein, less greasy, easy to digest, and eat less frequently. Ingest fresh vegetables and fruits every day to increase appetite and supplement micronutrients. For patients undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, they should often eat animal liver, pig blood, lean meat, black sesame, lotus seeds, jujube, zodiac seeds, longan, etc. Maintain normal blood cell numbers and functions; it is recommended to eat more potassium-rich fruits such as oranges, bananas, etc., and avoid tobacco, alcohol, strong tea, coffee and rough food; if you have a burning sensation in the throat, dry mouth, and difficulty swallowing When the oral mucosa reacts, patients should often rinse their mouths to keep the mouth moist. Food is made into gravy and broth to eat together, which is helpful for swallowing, thereby increasing the patient's intake. Make every effort to create a clean, comfortable and clean ward eating environment.

3. Cancer Care 3. Cancer Palliative Care

Palliative care is an emerging discipline. It is an active overall care for patients who do not respond to radical treatment. That is to get rid of physical, psychological, social and religious problems through early identification, active assessment, pain control, and treatment of other painful symptoms. Changing the quality of life of patients and loved ones Palliative care emphasizes four full services, that is, the whole family and the whole team. Provide holistic care through a team approach, with patients and family members as care units. It is not advocated to implement treatment or overtreatment that may add pain and meaninglessness to patients, and emphasizes reducing pain, allowing patients to die peacefully, safely, and with dignity, that is, optimizing the quality of life at the end.

The basic contents of palliative care are: (1) dress control, especially pain control, including PAC technology, WHO recommends three-step analgesia for cancer analgesia and so on. (2) Support patients, involve patients in decision-making, and respect their autonomy. Inform the condition and progress, discuss the care plan with the patient, timely feedback the treatment effect, and provide the necessary information source and social support. (3) Support family members. Palliative care treats patients and family members as a whole. Relatives of patients have the psychology of accommodation, despair, boredom, doubt, fear of death. Nurses should sympathize and understand them, listen patiently to their opinions and requirements, and guide them to acknowledge the reality, calmly deal with them, and maintain a good attitude in front of patients. (4) Death education: Let patients know that death is an inevitable result of life development. In a sense, death is a natural way to relieve pain. In the face of death, don't regret it, let it be, and there is no need to worry about it. Your loved ones will live in peace and there will be people who have not completed their careers.

4. Cancer Care 4. Cancer Music Care

Music, as a non-verbal communication method, is often better than language therapy when it enters the deep consciousness of people. It can achieve the effect that ordinary psychological therapy cannot achieve. Music therapy can reduce the status of cancer patients. Anxiety and trait anxiety are a popular adjuvant therapy for patients. The research results show that music therapy can quickly improve the psychological state of anxiety and depression in cancer patients, have sedative and analgesic effects on patients, and reduce the symptoms of nausea and fatigue caused by radiotherapy. Different music works on human sensory organs, which have different effects such as calming emotions, improving sleep, increasing appetite, and alleviating pain.

Music nursing methods: (1) Music performance method: Patients play music by themselves to achieve the purpose of fully distributing stress and feelings, and can also perform in combination. (2) Music appreciation method: The nurse arranges a certain time to listen to music or play songs according to the situation. Patients appreciate music through hearing and vision, and use the inherent meaning and charm of music to help patients recover.

5. Cancer Care 5. Cancer Pain Care

It is reported that more than 3.05 million cancer patients have pain symptoms every day, and about 70% of patients with advanced cancer mainly complain of pain, of which 50% are severe pain, which has a great negative impact on the survival of patients. In recent years, methods of controlling pain at home and abroad have continued to develop and improve.

Pain care methods include: (1) Establish a family-style ward to create a good environment for the patient. The layout of the ward should be quiet, tidy, beautiful and warm. (2) To establish a good relationship between nurses and patients, the nurses must be civilized in language, be dignified, and be skilled in operation in order to gain the trust of patients, make patients dare to face reality, actively cooperate with treatment, and fight stubbornly against pain. (3) Drug analgesia In the application of analgesics, there must be a long-term arrangement to break the old concept of on-demand administration. A phased compound administration method is used to control pain before it starts or just to ensure that the drug maintains a certain concentration in the body. This can not only avoid the gradual increase of the dose, but also reduce the patient's fear of pain. (4) Other methods include patients' self-controlled analgesia (PCA) drug block method to destroy neural pain pathways and neurosurgical methods. The nurse must grasp the information of the patient's pain to correctly assess the degree of pain, and make timely and effective treatment according to the different conditions of the patient

6. Cancer Care 6. Cancer Social Support Care

Social support refers to the spiritual and material help and support from various aspects of society such as family relatives, colleagues, and unions.

Cancer care aid. Social support can encourage patients to use more active coping strategies to improve patient immunity and adaptive behaviors to reduce psychosomatic symptoms. The diagnosis of cancer makes almost all patients have difficulty adapting. They need support from many aspects. Nurses have the responsibility to do a good job in this area, provide effective ways for patients to provide social support, and mobilize effective sources of social support to guide patients to actively seek support to give patients a sense of psychological belonging.

Cancer Care Research Hotspots

1. Cancer Care 1. Symptom Group Management

Cancer patients have to suffer from various adverse reactions caused by the disease itself and treatment. These symptoms often coexist and affect each other. Dodd first proposed the concept of symptom clusters in cancer patients, that is, 3 or more symptoms that coexist and are related to each other. Compared with individual symptoms, the symptom clusters have a synergistic effect, which increases the patient's symptom burden. Through the study of the correlation between different symptoms and its inducing factors, the intervention of a single symptom can effectively manage the entire symptom group, and provide a reference for clinical medical staff to accurately predict the symptoms and effective intervention. For example, the use of analgesics can effectively alleviate the symptoms of pain-restlessness-fatigue, and effective intervention of physical symptoms can reduce the level of anxiety or depression in the symptoms.

2. Cancer Care 2. Post Traumatic Growth

Cancer patients have a wide range of mental health problems, with incidence rates ranging from 23% to 53%, the most prominent of which are psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and fear, and post-traumatic stress, changes in body image and self-esteem. Therefore, some scholars have suggested that "saving the heart" is more important than curing cancer. Cancer is not just a traumatic event with a negative impact. Patients also have the potential to grow while suffering. American psychologist Tedischi and others first proposed the concept of post-traumatic growth (PTG) and defined it as a kind of positive psychological change experienced by patients after fighting the major life crisis.

3. Cancer Care 3. Palliative Care

The WHO's latest definition of palliative care is measures to improve the quality of life of patients and families by addressing life-threatening disease-related issues, such as preventing and reducing pain through early identification and accurate assessment, controlling pain and other symptoms, and addressing psychological, social and Mental problems. The field of palliative care for cancer patients is constantly expanding. It has moved from the marginal field of clinical practice to the central area. It emphasizes early palliative intervention and runs through the whole process of diagnosis and treatment. It attaches importance to survival prediction and information notification. It also emphasizes the importance of pain control and the importance of Death education with family members.

4. Cancer Care 4. Continuing Care

Continuing nursing is a new nursing model developed in the middle of the 20th century. The American Geriatrics Association defines continuous care as the design of a series of care activities to ensure that cancer patients can obtain continuous and coordinated health services when transferring between different health care places or between different levels of health care institutions, and prevent Or reduce the deterioration of health. Continuing care is a new type of care that extends hospital care to the community or home.

Cancer Care Trends and Prospects

1. Cancer Care 1. Continuous Improvement of Symptom Group Management

Symptom group management is simple, feasible, and economically beneficial. It is recommended to further develop the research on symptom group assessment tools and influencing factors, and continuously enrich the research in the field of cancer patient symptom management. ^[3] However, there is no accepted best mathematical statistical analysis method for the study of symptom groups in cancer patients, which has affected the classification and composition of symptom groups to a certain extent. It is recommended to use multiple regression analysis or A-MOS software to study the correlation between different symptoms in a relatively stable combination in the symptom cluster. At the same time, strengthen the research on the mechanism of symptom clusters and intervention mechanisms, and explore effective symptom cluster intervention mechanisms to alleviate symptoms and ultimately improve the quality of life of patients with tumors.

2.PTG Cancer Care 2. A Closer Look at PTG for Cancer Patients

First of all, the literature on PTG research in cancer patients is relatively small, and the research objects are mainly focused on breast cancer patient populations. There is still no related research on PTG in other cancer types. ^[3] Secondly, there are more cross-section studies and less longitudinal studies.

Cancer care , Can not reflect the dynamic changes of patients' PTG. It is recommended to take a prospective longitudinal study and include the study from the time the patient is diagnosed with cancer. At the same time, expand the sample size, conduct in-depth, systematic tracking, and comprehensive and objective evaluation to better describe the dynamic evolution of PTG. Third, there is a lack of intervention research on PTG, and it is recommended to explore interventions to promote PTG from multiple perspectives, links and ways, such as adjusting the cognitive structure of individuals, effective coping methods of the church, and helping to establish and use effective social support systems. Etc., to promote the formation of optimism, strength and hope of cancer patients, and provide greater development space for PTG.

3. Cancer care 3. Advance death education and early palliative care

Many factors, such as the traditional "taboo" cultural concept, medical policies, attitudes of medical staff to death, and psychological cognition of cancer patients and their families, have affected the development of death education in China. There are already studies on the design and implementation of death courses for clinical nurses, and it is hoped that the attitudes and concepts of nurses towards death will be changed as soon as possible. For patients and their families, how to use the mass media's guidance to popularize death education, how to start palliative care education in the early stage of cancer patients and enable them to face death and establish a correct view of life and death, etc., remains to be further explored.

4. Cancer Care 4. Expanding Continuing Care

Under the current domestic three-level health service system, the care provided by cancer patients in various institutions is relatively complete, but there is a lack of effective collaboration between institutions, and there is a lack of continuity in the care of patients after discharge from hospitals. The long-term survival of patients with tumors is more pronounced. Therefore, the following issues must be fully considered in the implementation of continuous care: how to further institutionalize and standardize the continuous care model as part of the hospital's work? In terms of home and community care, patients need to bear the disease from the disease alone during tumor-bearing survival. How to meet the needs of physical, psychological, family and social pressures? How to meet the needs of physical, psychological, information and social support? It is recommended that relevant departments formulate relevant policies, improve home and community health services, and continue to promote continuous care for advanced cancer patients. Home and community care services such as regular follow-up, family beds, temporary visits. Secondly, there is a status quo in which the capabilities of continuing care providers are uneven. There is no relevant guidance and standard for the content and operation process of care. In the future, it is necessary to establish and improve the monitoring system for the quality of continuing care.