More than 400 nurses from across Victoria have participated in VCCC Alliance research training programs over the past four years through the Nurse-led Research Hub, increasing their skills and knowledge to ultimately benefit cancer patients.
Led by VCCC Alliance Research and Education Lead, Professor Mei Krishnasamy, the program has held 11 webinars, organised and delivered 10 workshops and created and delivered a bespoke online training program – Essential Research Skills for Clinical Nurses – during the past four-year program of work. This equates to 438 nurses who have benefited from face-to-face and virtual research training activities delivered by the hub.
“Every person affected by cancer, irrespective of where they receive care and treatment, interacts with a nurse,” said Prof Krishnasamy. “Investing in the research capacity of nurses addresses an overlooked opportunity to deliver the best experiences and outcomes of care possible for patients and their carers. Research shows that when patients are cared for by informed specialist cancer nurses, they have a better quality of life and longer survival duration, and the health system benefits from more efficient care. This has been the driving imperative behind the work of the Nurse-led Research Hub team,” she said.
Building the research capability and capacity of the nursing workforce across Victoria has been the overriding goal of the program since its inception.
“We know that nurses’ want to develop research skills and be able to use those skills in practice to innovate care and transform the health system,” Prof Krishnasamy said. “They are the largest group of our online Centre for Cancer Education platform.”
With that in mind, the VCCC Alliance Nurse-led Research Hub and education experts pooled their expertise to create a comprehensive suite of activities and initiatives that enable nurses to increase their skills and confidence to lead practice change initiatives for better patient and system-level outcomes. This has included engaging with those with a lived experience of cancer, implementation science, evaluation research, writing for publication, communicating their research and actively building equity into their clinical practice.
The Essential Research Skills for Cancer Nurses online training course is endorsed by the Australian College of Nursing. It embeds consumer engagement strategies, and research ethics and governance resources, across 11 modules which nurses can undertake at their own pace over a 12-month period. It takes approximately 20 hours in total study and assessment time.
Another benefit of the course is that while the scenarios and examples provided are cancer-related, the knowledge gained and skills developed can be applied to any clinical setting.
Since launching in September 2023, 78 nurses have enrolled from more than 30 organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Of the 14 who have completed the course to date, 93 per cent were satisfied or very satisfied with it,100 per cent agreed that they had learned something new, and 97 per cent had already applied that knowledge.
A recent evaluation of the Nurse-led Research Hub demonstrated that involvement in the program has a considerable and consistent impact on participants.
Seventy-two per cent of nurses agreed that taking part in an activity had strengthened their research knowledge moderately or a great deal, 56 per cent agreed that their awareness of research opportunities for nurses had been impacted moderately or a great deal, while 67 per cent and 60 per cent agreed that their desire to take part in research and their confidence to do so respectively, had been impacted somewhat or a great deal.
Of note, participating in an activity with the Nurse-led Research Hub had the strongest impact on participants’ desire to be involved in a research project, with many nurses telling the team that being in a room with like-minded nurses, sharing ideas and having those validated was deeply motivating.
“I was very novice and research-naive before participating in activities with the NLRH. It was through the NLRH that I was able to understand the importance of research being led by clinicians,” one participant said.
“I think the struggle with research is not necessarily understanding the concepts but being able to practically develop achievable questions and outcome measures and it was great to be able to tease these out in the workshops with some of the group’s real-life examples,” another participant said.
