Access to Linguistically Appropriate Information for Blood and Marrow Transplant Patients: Results from Transplant Center Staff Survey.

Blood or marrow transplant (BMT) is a potentially curative treatment for numerous cancers and non-malignant disorders. BMT is a resource-intense treatment process, requiring patients to comprehend difficult health information and navigate a complex healthcare system. Linguistic and cultural barriers create additional challenges for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) who may need translated information and interpretive services to make an informed decision about treatment. To identify information needs and gaps in language services for BMT patients with LEP, the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP)/Be The Match® administered a cross-sectional, web-based survey to 139 transplant centers (TCs) across the United States (U.S.). The survey yielded a 59% response rate. Findings show a significant need for translated patient education materials, especially in Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, and practice gaps in the use of appropriate interpreters. Nearly one third of respondents indicated using family and friends to interpret for patients. The inability to locate educational resources in a specific language, lack of available bilingual staff, lack of a formal, centralized tracking system, and outdated tracking systems also pose significant barriers to meeting the language needs of BMT patients with LEP.

Summary of the Second Annual BMT CTN Myeloma Intergroup Workshop on Minimal Residual Disease and Immune Profiling.

The second annual Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN) Myeloma Intergroup Workshop on Minimal Residual Disease and Immune Profiling was convened on December 7, 2017, at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting. During this workshop, investigators from around the world presented their latest research involving assessment of minimal residual disease (MRD) and immune profiling (IP) in myeloma. This document summarizes the workshop presentations as well as relevant ASH abstracts and focuses on the regulatory issues involved in the integration of MRD and IP assessment in clinical trial design and practice.

How Can I Promote Healing Outside of My Clinical Setting for Patients in Need of a Transplantation?

Nurses are individuals called to both care for patients and families and facilitate the healing process. Our profession fills a unique role in health care as oncology nurses combine medical science with the art of interpersonal relationships to provide both physical and emotional support for patients. Promoting healing and facilitating adjustment draws individuals to become exceptional nurses and is an innate quality of oncology nurses (American Nurses Association, 2016). It is a characteristic not easily separated from one's personality. Often, nurses become frustrated in their inability to do more for a patient or the family members. This feeling becomes particularly prevalent in life-limiting or life-threatening conditions, most notably cancer.
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The Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network: An Effective Infrastructure for Addressing Important Issues in Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation.

Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is a rapidly evolving field with active preclinical and clinical development of new strategies for patient assessment, graft selection and manipulation, and pre- and post-transplantation drug and cell therapy. New strategies require evaluation in definitive clinical trials; however, HCT trials face unique challenges, including the relatively small number of transplantations performed at any single center, the diverse indications for HCT requiring dissimilar approaches, the complex nature of the intervention itself, the risk of multiple complications in the immediate post-transplantation period, and the risk of important, though infrequent, late effects. The Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMT CTN) was established by the US National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and the National Cancer Institute to meet these challenges. In its 15 years as a network, the BMT CTN has proven to be a successful infrastructure for planning, implementing, and completing such trials and for providing definitive answers to questions leading to improvements in the understanding and practice of HCT. It has opened 37 trials, about one-half phase 2 and one-half phase 3, enrolled more than 8000 patients, and published 57 papers addressing important issues in the treatment of patients with life-threatening malignant and nonmalignant blood disorders. This review describes the network's accomplishments, key components of its success, lessons learned over the past 15 years, and challenges for the future.

Exposure of early pediatric trainees to blood and marrow transplantation leads to higher recruitment to the field.

The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) projects the need for allogeneic unrelated blood and marrow transplantation (BMT) in the United States as 10,000 per year. Although the NMDP is preparing to facilitate that number by the year 2015, there are several barriers to meeting this goal, including the need to recruit more health care personnel, including BMT physicians. To learn how best to recruit BMT physicians, we examined why practicing BMT physicians chose to enter the field and why others did not. We conducted a Web-based survey among pediatric hematology/oncology (PHO) and BMT physician providers and trainees to identify the factors influencing their decision to choose or not choose a career in BMT. Out of 259 respondents (48% male, 74% of Caucasian origin), 94 self-identified as BMT physicians, 112 as PHO physicians, and 53 as PHO trainees. The PHO and BMT providers spent an average of 53% of their time in clinical activities. More than two-thirds of PHO providers reported providing BMT services at their institutions, most commonly for inpatient coverage (73%). The proportion of providers exposed to BMT early in training was significantly higher among BMT providers compared with PHO providers (51% versus 18% in medical school [P < .0001]; 70% versus 50% during residency [P < .005]). Exposure during fellowship (94%) did not differ between the 2 groups. The decision to pursue a career in BMT was made before fellowship (medical school or residency) by 50% of the respondents. A lower proportion of BMT providers than PHO providers reported current involvement in the education of medical students and residents (76% versus 98%; P < .0001). Of the 53 trainees who responded, 64% reported not contemplating a career in BMT. Of these, 68% identified inadequate exposure to BMT before PHO fellowship as the reason behind this decision. Only 26% reported receiving exposure to the BMT field while in medical school, and 43% reported exposure during residency. The 2 most common reasons cited for choosing a career as a BMT physician were the degree of intellectual and scientific challenge (89%) and the influence of role models/mentors in the field (67%). The results of this survey suggest that early exposure to BMT during medical school and residency is associated with increased interest in pursuing a career in BMT. BMT physicians and training program directors can foster interest in the field by promoting BMT-focused education and clinical inpatient and outpatient rotations during medical school and residency. This early exposure to BMT may aid recruitment of future transplantation providers.

Stop waiting and start creating: service learning with an outpatient bone marrow transplant unit art cart program.

This paper examines how master of occupational therapy students, their occupational therapy instructor, and a community-based licensed clinical social worker collaborated in a service learning art cart program on an outpatient bone marrow transplant unit. As they progressed through the phases of Kolb's model of service learning, occupational therapy students, their occupational therapy instructor, and the licensed clinical social worker were all able to meet mutual goals of serving a unique patient population, increasing knowledge of best practices, and building and fostering university/community relationships.

Manhattan transfer: lethal radiation, bone marrow transplantation, and the birth of stem cell biology, ca. 1942-1961.

This study investigates how, in the late 1940s and 1950s, fears of nuclear accidents and nuclear warfare shaped postwar radiobiology. The new and intense forms of radiation generated by nuclear reactor technology, and which would be released in the event of a nuclear war, created concerns about a public-health hazard unprecedented in form and scale. Fears of inadvertent exposure to acute and potentially lethal radiation launched a search for anti-radiation therapies, out of which emerged the new technique of bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This study analyzes the use of BMT first as a research tool to explore the biological effects of ionizing radiation, and then as an adjunct to radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer. In highlighting how BMT became the province of different research and clinical constituencies, this study develops an understanding of the forces and contingencies that shaped its development. Exploring the emergence of BMT and the uses to which it was put, it reveals that BMT remained a technique in the making -- unstable and far from standardized, even as it became both a widely used research tool and rapidly made its way into the clinic. More broadly, it casts new light on one route through which the Manhattan Project influenced postwar radiobiology; it also affords new insights into one means by which radiobiology came to serve the interests of the Cold War state. In its focus on BMT this paper provides a new perspective on the evolving relationship between radiobiology and biomedicine in the postwar period.

An exploration of the concept of patient education: implications for the development of educational programmes for relapsed post-bone marrow transplantation patients and their families in Korea.

Frequently, the nursing care of patients who undergo bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is focused on acute, curative care. However, given that recurrent disease following BMT has a poor prognosis, a focus on acute care alone appears inappropriate for those clients who experience relapse. Care for this group of patients should be more inclusive of principles that underpin palliative care. Patient education is an important element of palliative care. Therefore, patient education based on the principles of palliative care should play a significant part in the nursing care of BMT patients with recurrent disease. This paper proposes a framework for the development of a palliative educational programme for relapsed post-BMT patients and their families in Korea. The framework was developed through a concept analysis of patient education.