Core areas of practice and associated competencies for nurses working as professional cancer navigators.

UNLABELLED: Fillion et al. (2012) recently designed a conceptual framework for professional cancer navigators describing key functions of professional cancer navigation. PURPOSE: Building on this framework, this study defines the core areas of practice and associated competencies for professional cancer navigators. METHODS: The methods used in this study included: literature review, mapping of navigation functions against practice standards and competencies, and validation of this mapping process with professional navigators, their managers and nursing experts and comparison of roles in similar navigation programs. FINDINGS: Associated competencies were linked to the three identified core areas of practice, which are: 1) providing information and education, 2) providing emotional and supportive care, and 3) facilitating coordination and continuity of care. CONCLUSION: Cancer navigators are in a key position to improve patient and family empowerment and continuity of care. IMPLICATIONS: This is an important step for advancing the role of oncology nurses in navigator positions and identifying areas for further research.

Development of a scale to measure health professions students' self-efficacy beliefs in interprofessional learning.

A need exists for measures to evaluate the impact of interprofessional education (IPE) interventions. We undertook development and evaluation of a scale to measure self-efficacy perceptions of pre-licensure students in medicine, dentistry and health professions. The scale was developed in the context of a project entitled, "Seamless Care: An Experiential Model of Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centered Practice". As self-efficacy perceptions are associated with the likelihood of taking on certain tasks, the difficulty of those tasks, and perseverance in the face of barriers, we reasoned that understanding changes in students' perceptions and their relation to other outcomes was important. A 16-item scale was developed from a conceptual analysis of relevant tasks and the existing literature. Content validity was assessed by six Canadian IPE experts. Pre-licensure students (n = 209) participated in a pilot test of the instrument. Content validity was rated highly by the six judges; internal consistency of the scale (Cronbach's α = 96) and subscales 1 (α = .94) and 2 (α = .93) were high. Principal components analysis resulted in identification of two factors, each accounting for 34% of the variance: interprofessional interaction, and interprofessional team evaluation and feedback. We conclude that this scale can be useful in evaluating IPE interventions.