A COVID-19 screening tool for oncology telephone triage
- PDF / 1,526,091 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 92 Downloads / 160 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A COVID-19 screening tool for oncology telephone triage Emmika Elkin 1 & Carol Viele 2 & Karen Schumacher 2 & Maureen Boberg 1 & Mari Cunningham 1 & Lauren Liu 1 & Christine Miaskowski 1,2,3,4 Received: 19 June 2020 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Purpose Symptoms associated with COVID-19 infection have made the assessment and triage of cancer patients extremely complicated. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and implementation of a COVID-19 screening tool for oncology telephone triage. Methods An Ambulatory Oncology Clinical Nurse Educator and three faculty members worked on the development of an oncology specific triage tool based on the challenges that oncology nurses were having with the generic COVID triage tool. A thorough search of the published literature, as well as pertinent websites, verified that no screening tool for oncology patients was available. Results The screening tool met a number of essential criteria: (1) simple and easy to use, (2) included the most common signs and symptoms as knowledge of COVID-19 infection changed, (3) was congruent with the overall screening procedures of the medical center, (4) included questions about risk factors for and environmental exposures related to COVID-19, and (5) assessed patient’s current cancer history and treatment status. Over a period of 3 weeks, the content and specific questions on the tool were modified based on information obtained from a variety of sources and feedback from the triage nurses. Conclusion Within 1 month, the tool was developed and implemented in clinical practice. Oncology clinicians can modify this tool to triage patients as well as to screen patients in a variety of outpatient settings (e.g., chemotherapy infusion units, radiation therapy departments). The tool will require updates and modifications based on available resources and individual health care organizations’ policies and procedures. Keywords COVID-19 . Cancer . Telephone triage . Screening . Symptoms
Introduction Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in December 2019, in Wuhan, China [1], the care of oncology patients has changed dramatically. While data on the occurrence of COVID-19 in cancer patients is
* Emmika Elkin [email protected] 1
Department of Nursing, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA
2
Department of Physiological Nursing, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
3
Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
4
Pain and Addiction Research Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
limited, in a study from China, the prevalence rate was 1.0% among 1590 confirmed cases [2]. Of note, in their analysis, after adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidities, a cancer diagnosis was associated with the highest risk of developing severe adverse ev
Data Loading...
