SIOP’s Pediatric Oncology in Developing Countries Nursing Working Group Holds Workshop
On October 3rd and 4th, the SIOP Pediatric Oncology in Developing Countries (PODC) Nursing Working Group held a pre-SIOP conference workshop supported by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in London, led by the head of INCTR’s Nursing Oncology Program, Julia Challinor. In addition to the five nurses who received SIOP Nursing Scholarships, three other nurses from countries with limited resources were invited to participate in a working meeting to create a flexible pediatric nursing curriculum for adaption in local settings. Nurses from twinning programs in Ghana (World Child Cancer), Ethiopia (INCTR USA), Colombia (Dana Farber), Cameroon (South Africa) and India (Cure2Children) joined nurses from South Africa, Pakistan and Argentina.
Prior to the workshop, a “needs assessment” questionnaire had been circulated to 59 nurses from PODC countries. Those findings were addressed in a Delphi questionnaire to create suggested strategies to meet the PODC nurses' educational needs. The Delphi was distributed to nurses from resource rich countries who were either participating in twinning programs or who had had experience teaching in PODC countries. During the workshop, the nurses were divided in groups according to GNP and reviewed the findings from the two questionnaires and brainstormed over the two days.
The outcome was the design of a curriculum framework that prioritized the nursing topics of most need for PODC nurses. After reflecting on the workshop, on Saturday, Oct. 6, five pairs of nurses – one from a resource-rich country and one from a PODC country- volunteered to prepare a teaching module on one of the five topics: nursing orientation, infection control, communication skills, nutrition, and disease knowledge. The PODC nurses will test their module in their local PODC site and evaluate the experience within in six months. We look forward to SIOP 2013 in Hong Kong where we plan to have a follow-up meeting to move forward refining the existing topics and assigning new ones. We deeply appreciate the support of the RCN for this initiative!
