CareSearch is funded

by the Australian Government

Department of Health.

Helping to close the gaps in bereavement care for oncology nurses: the role of online resources and information Deb Rawlings, Jennifer Tieman

CNSA 2016

What will be covered today:

• Relevance to cancer nurses

• Finding the bereavement evidence – why does it matter?

• CareSearch resources

• Search filters

• Clinical evidence pages

• Resources for patients, carers, families

Introduction

• Cancer nurses work to support carers and families during

cancer diagnosis and treatment, and may also need to provide

support in dealing with anticipatory grief when families realise

that the journey is coming to an end.

• Bereavement support often continues after the patient has died:

when relatives return to see ward staff; or in attending memorial

services or other rituals.

• Nurses will also often refer patients and families (or colleagues)

to relevant information in relation to supporting the bereaved,

however finding evidence based resources can be challenging.

Why evidence matters

• Informs direct care at the individual level

• Guides decision making (policy and service)

• Helps assess value of a particular approach

• Deciding between options

• Provides a basis to disagree

• If you want to recommend another course of action it is important to have evidence to back up what you are saying.

Best Practice

• Bereavement through the death of a loved one is a

situation that touches many lives and crosses all

national boundaries. Bereavement care is important,

and like any service that is provided can benefit from

evidence of best practice, now available in a growing

body of international literature.

• This care is often provided by practitioners working

alone or in small teams without ready access to the

databases holding this literature.

New Evidence Tools: Search Filters

• In a partnership with the Australian Centre for Grief

and Bereavement, CareSearch has developed the

Bereavement Search Filter (BSF) to provide trustworthy

and easy access to international published evidence (in

English) indexed in the PubMed database.

• The tools provided using the BSF are available free to

anyone with access to the Web, and can support all

practitioners working in the field of bereavement care,

providing one-click access to current global evidence.

Easy to Find

Characteristics of ideal search:

• Open access (no registration)

• Pre written (easy)

• One click (fast)

• Retrieves what we need and excludes what we don’t (accurate)

Ideally, what we would like is a search that does all of these things.

Why use a search filter?

An “evidence based" search

= known effectiveness

Benefits

Saves time

Increases likelihood of quality retrievals

Removes individual search burden

Embeds technical expertise

Facilitates knowledge translation

Methodology

• An Expert Advisory Group comprising bereavement

practitioners and academics was established to develop the

Search Filters.

• A palliative care clinician was appointed to revise and develop

new bereavement webpage content for use by health

professionals.

• Associated pages for patients and families were written and

relevant resources identified.

• The new web content was externally reviewed for authority and

relevance before being uploaded.

Other related Search Filters

• Grief and Loss (general – rather than the loss of a loved one)

Search Filter and topic searches

You may need to find grief and loss information for many reasons:

• your patients

• Your colleagues

• Yourself

Also just released

• Costs of Bereavement Care

Summary

Bereavement Search Filter

Created by CareSearch and used on the website

Benefits for clinicians

Topic searches are targeted to clinical practice

Searches are fast and easy to use (no need to be an expert searcher)

Searches are reliable

Searches are free and open access (no need for logon or paid subscription)

Barriers to using evidence in practice can be reduced

Clinical Resources• Clinical Evidence pages

• Based on RCT or SRs

• Each links to a PubMed Topic Search

• Each links to a review collection

• Consumer resources

• Based on summaries of best available evidence

• All content is peer reviewed and freely available

Each page includes: Key messages/ an overview / what is known / active research areas and controversies

An example of the different types of bereavement PubMed searches –developed using the filter

You can create your own search if it isn’t on the list

I ran a search with the bereavement filter on cancer and anticipatory grief

Here I ran the Multicultural bereavement search.

For Patients, Carers, Families

• Good quality easy to read resources are available for

consumers about bereavement

• Online palliative care information can help support patients and

families at the end of life.

• Having trustworthy information can help encourage involvement in

decision making.

• You can safely direct your patients or their families to these

• Readability formulas help to make patient information match the

reading skills of the intended user

• They can all be printed for those who do not use computers

Conclusion

• Search filters can facilitate access to relevant literature and evidence globally and thereby reduce the searching burden for the diverse health professionals working around the world in the field of bereavement care.

• Evidence based page content can inform the practice of those in cancer who care for patients and families approaching the end of their life and in bereavement.

CareSearch is funded

by the Australian Government

Department of Health.

CareSearch would like to thank the many people who contribute their

time and expertise to the project, including members of the National

Advisory Group and the Knowledge Network Management Group.

www.caresearch.com.au