The Status of Cancer Nursing Research in Canada

Authors

  • Lesley F. Degner

Abstract

Over the past several decades nurses have demonstrated their commitment to the generation of knowledge which will improve both the long-term survival and the quality of life for people with cancer. As the medical specialty of oncology emerged in the 1950's, nurses became involved in the management of biomedical research. Their efforts were directed toward maintaining the integrity of the research design, given the constraints of the clinical setting, and to recruiting patients in an ethically sensitive manner. The psychosocial support provided by these research nurses to patients enrolled in particularly toxic therapeutic trials has probably reduced problems with attrition and subsequent evaluation of the therapeutic effectiveness of different treatment regimens. The past decade has seen the development among nurses of another type of commitment to the scientific enterprise with the emergence of cancer nursing research. Clinicians and academics have identified priorities within this field of research (Oberst, 1978), and are generating an increasingly impressive body of literature (Grant and Padilla, 1983). Scientific inquiry in cancer nursing has tended to focus on the interactions between physical/biological processes and psychosocial responses and adaptations (Benoliel, 1983).

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Published

1984-04-13

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Articles