Exploring Clinicians' Perspectives of Barriers to Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Assessment and Management in Oncology Practice: A Qualitative Analysis of Semi-structured Interviews.

BACKGROUND: Quantitative reports suggest that the assessment and management of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) in practice is suboptimal. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this qualitative analysis was to explore clinician-related perspectives of CIPN assessment, management, and the use of a CIPN decision support tool. METHODS: Clinicians from the breast oncology, gastrointestinal oncology, or multiple myeloma disease centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who interacted with a CIPN clinician decision support algorithm were eligible to participate in the semi-structured interviews. The interview guide included questions about CIPN assessment, management, and clinician-decision support tool use. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using inductive content analysis. RESULTS: Of the 39 eligible clinicians, 15 agreed to be interviewed. Interviewed clinicians were mainly physicians (73.3) and White, non-Hispanic (93.3%). Main themes from the interviews included (1) CIPN management practice patterns (eg, endorsement of non-recommended management strategies or lack of standardization for chemotherapy dose reduction) and barriers (eg, insurance prior authorizations required for duloxetine prescription), (2) CIPN assessment practice patterns (eg, use of subjective instead of objective CIPN assessment approaches) and barriers (eg, difficult to interpret patients' CIPN report between visits), and (3) utilization of the clinician decision support tool (eg, all assessment tasks lead to same management options). CONCLUSIONS: There are several barriers to clinicians' use of evidence-based CIPN assessment and management strategies. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Future work should be focused on addressing barriers to duloxetine prescription, developing evidence-based CIPN assessment and management strategies, improving symptom monitoring, and facilitating referrals to existing supportive care services.

Nursing students' experience of practice placements.

Clinical practice placements are an essential component of pre-registration nursing programmes. Integration into a new team in an unfamiliar setting, which has its own values, practices, culture and language, can be stressful for nursing students. This article presents and discusses students' reflections on preparing for, entering and leaving practice placements. Ten students who participated in fortnightly group reflective sessions, discussed and analysed their learning experiences while on practice placements in an acute hospital. The challenges the students encountered were deconstructed using a group narrative approach. The students experienced ethical dilemmas around patient dignity, consent and advocacy as well as factors external to the practice setting, such as navigating systems and processes to access information before starting practice placements, managing household duties and academic workloads while working long shifts, and managing fatigue and loneliness. The students devised recommendations for other students to enable them to navigate their practice placements effectively and enhance their learning experience. Raising awareness among academic and practice placement staff of the challenges students encounter before and during their practice placement is essential to assist students to succeed and maximise their learning potential.