UPEI faculty member co-leads national oncology symptom triage and remote support project
When adults who are receiving treatment for cancer experience side-effects that affect their quality of life, often it is nurses who support and guide them through dealing with those issues.
Over 50 per cent of oncology nurses in Canada provide remote support to cancer patients in their homes, primarily by telephone.
Dr. Gail Macartney, Nurse Practitioner and Assistant Professor, UPEI Faculty of Nursing, and Dr. Dawn Stacey, Distinguished Professor, University of Ottawa, are leading a pan-Canadian Oncology Symptom Triage and Remote Support (COSTaRS) project to update 17 evidence-informed practice guides and develop a new one that nurses can use on the telephone to assist cancer patients deal with treatment-related symptoms in their homes.
With a two-year grant from the Canadian Cancer Society in 2022, the team recently added an 18th practice guide to help patients with difficulty swallowing. The other 17 guides, which were developed between 2013 and 2020 and have now been updated through this project, cover common symptoms such as fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and fever.
Using a symptom-specific guide, a nurse can assess the severity of the symptom the patient is experiencing and triage them for symptom management, using a scale of mild with self-care, moderate with 24-hour follow-up, or severe requiring immediate medical attention. If symptoms are not severe, the nurse reviews medications the patient is using for the symptom, discusses self-care strategies with them, and documents the care plan agreed upon with them.
“COSTaRS is a novel way to improve cancer care in the community and support nurses who are caring for patients receiving cancer-related therapies,” said Macartney, a certified oncology nurse who has worked in the areas of adult acute leukemia and pediatric neuro-oncology. “Our goal in developing these remote practice guides is to enhance the quality, safety, and consistency of cancer symptom management by nurses.”
Research studies show that when nursing care is guided by COSTaRS, she said, cancer patients receiving treatments had decreased symptom severity, improved quality of life, increased self-care management, fewer emergency department visits, and high patient satisfaction. And nurses had more complete assessments and worked to a higher scope of nursing practice.
The practice guides are endorsed by the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology and are freely available for use in routine remote support practices.
UPEI acknowledges the assistance of Canada’s tri-council of federal granting agencies—Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)—through its Research Support Fund, which helps fund services and infrastructure that support research activities at the University. In 2024–2025, UPEI’s RSF allocation is $1,041,691.
