Preparing guidelines and documented clinical policies

The importance of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for the quality and development of supportive care in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries

Supportive care CPGs are intended to improve the quality of supportive care received by cancer patients. They hold potential benefits for health-care professionals, health-care organizations and patients. In order to provide an effective influence of CPGs on supportive care development in CEE countries their validity and successful implementation in clinical practice must be ensured. This would involve several important steps: (1) achievement of a consensus across Europe about what constitutes supportive care in cancer; (2) identification of supportive care priorities in CEE countries to be covered by the guidelines; and (3) searching existing CPGs relevant to previously identified priorities. Valid international CPGs could then be translated and adapted to local resources and circumstances in CEE countries and used to prepare national supportive care CPGs which could assist in the development of national supportive care standards. Skills, expertise and additional investment are required for local adaptation, dissemination and implementation of international supportive care CPGs.

The EONS core curriculum revision project

This paper provides an overview of the EONS (European Oncology Nursing Study) core curriculum revision project. The aim of this project was to revise the EONS core curriculum for a Post-Basic Course in Cancer Nursing, first published in 1989, so that it would better reflect patient and family need and contemporary cancer nursing practice. A further aim of the project was to address the educational needs of both adult and paediatric oncology nurses. To achieve these aims a core curriculum revision meeting was organized and attended by representatives from most of the EU Member States. A rough draft of the core curriculum was developed, circulated and subjected to further scrutiny and modification. Following approval of the final draft, the core curriculum was translated from English into the 10 other official EU languages and made available in both paper and electronic form. The updated core curriculum was launched during the ECCO-10 conference and has now been disseminated widely amongst European cancer nurses and the wider nursing and medical community.