Experience Using Oncology Nurse Navigation to Help the Psychological Adjustment of an Outpatient With Rare Tumor Recurrence.

Oncology Nurse Navigation is a professional service that integrates complex medical care procedures and promotes patient awareness of the major nursing problems. Using pre-assessment strategies and the integration of medical care information, Nurse Navigators help patients and their families gain comprehensive medical information and nursing care guidance from their initial post-diagnosis visit to their follow-up visits after remission. This article describes the author's experience with a 53-year- old married overseas Chinese woman who had been diagnosed with a rare tumor, PEComa, and who had traveled to Taiwan for treatment. During the outpatient care period with tumor progression, in addition to disease-related psychological and physical discomfort and pain, the prolonged uncertainty regarding treatment had induced adjustment difficulties and psychological symptoms in the patient. The patient's husband continued to work at his job in order to support the family's finances and was not able to maintain a close understanding of his wife's situation. He developed emotional stress when he saw his wife's disease relapse. The authors used Oncology Nurse Navigation approaches to actively assess the needs of the patient and her spouse, to explore their psychological state using emotional assessment scales, to understand the impact of recurrence on the family, to provide available resources and information, to help the couple learn to cope with psychological adjustment symptoms, to enhance their cognitive understanding of the disease, and to learn useful measures that helped them regain physical control, control over the treatment process, and effectively adapt to the disease and its effects. The authors' experience using Oncology Nurse Navigation with this patient may serve as a reference for healthcare professionals to facilitate the proactive assessment of patient needs at different stages of outpatient care, to remove barriers to seeking medical care through early interventions, and to implement a comprehensive and patient-centered approach to cancer treatment that may improve cancer treatment efficacy and quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]