Kathleen Mooney, RN, PhD, FAAN: The Dynamic and Important Role of Oncology Nurse Researchers
Kathleen Mooney, RN, PhD, FAAN
College of Nursing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
The Group Room at the 2011 Oncology Nursing Society Research Conference is my possible, in part, by:
Selma R. Schimmel, Founder, Vital Options International
This is Selma Schimmel in Los Angeles at the Oncology Nursing Society, eleventh research conference, and our discussion continues. We are joined now by Kathy Mooney, an Oncology Nurse, Professor and Lewis S. Perry and Janet B. Peery Presidential Endowed Chair in Nursing at the College of Nursing at the University of Utah. Hello.
Kathleen Mooney, RN, PhD, FAAN, College of Nursing, University of Utah
Hello.
Selma R. Schimmel:
Welcome to a change in climate.
Kathleen Mooney:
Oh, I’m enjoying it.
Selma R. Schimmel:
But, you know, we’ve been speaking with your colleagues throughout this meeting and we’ve been highlighting some of the very important areas of research that are being presented at this meeting and what is going to be interesting now with you is to really talk about the field of research amongst oncology nurses, also in the hopes that we can stimulate some of our viewers to consider nursing as a career because most all of you that I have spoken with today hold a PhD in nursing and a PhD allows you to emerge into some very dynamic areas of research and science.
Kathleen Mooney:
It is exciting. I’ve had a long career and one of the great things in choosing this career is there are so many things you can do. It’s meaningful work, it’s important work and one of them is to consider being a nurse scientist.
Selma R. Schimmel:
What does that mean? How is a nurse scientist different from what people perceive a general nurse is?
Kathleen Mooney:
A nurse scientist takes some of the clinical problems that you see with patients in cancer – they’re fatigue, their nausea, whether they’re afraid to get screening, their fears about having cancer because their family member had cancer – and then really gets a chance to study it, to try to figure out how do we help people. A clinical nurse taking care of our patients in that moment in time makes a difference in their lives, helps them through the day, helps them go home, helps them deal with their cancer, and a nurse scientist takes those very problems that patient is experiencing and says, ‘how can we impact that overall for all patients who are coming in’.
Selma R. Schimmel:
Do you have… outside of the clinical research setting, do you have contact with patients or are nurse scientists really working more behind the scenes with some patient interaction but mostly very scientific focus?
Kathleen Mooney:
The best way is to be partnered with people in clinical practice so that you hear the relevant problems that they see patients are facing and then you do go back and work on what are ways to approach, what are novel ways, what are new ways to address those problems and come up with more powerful interventions to help them with their problems. So, do we spend time day-to-day in the infusion center or on the clinical unit? Not as much, except when we’re over recruiting patients and then you have a very intense one-on-one while you’re collecting data with them.
Selma R. Schimmel:
You gave a talk. Your presentation really outlines effective program formulation in developing the study nurse research programs to really improve both the role and advance the goals of nurse scientists. What are your key talking points to oncology nurses?
Kathleen Mooney:
Well, that talk was centered on challenging nurse researchers to come up with really the cutting edge questions to ask and how to reformulate a problem that we’ve been studying over time and we’re making little progress but we really haven’t come up with effective new ways of addressing the problem; one example would be cancer related fatigue. We know that exercise helps; it helps some people, it helps somewhat, but cancer patients are still fatigued. So, how do we reformulate our questions we ask so that we develop a better understanding of the mechanisms and their [INAUDIBLE] and can come up with better interventions that really do improve people’s energy.
Selma R. Schimmel:
So, how does an oncology nurse researcher or scientist interface and work side-by-side with a, let’s say, physician researcher or scientist?
Kathleen Mooney:
One of the ways is that as a physician is looking – at the treatment of cancer, looking for curing cancer, looking for a new approach in chemotherapy, radiation, biotherapy, targeted therapies – is for the nurse scientist to say, ‘how does this impact a patient? What kind of side effects do they have? What do they have to deal with in order to stay compliant and participate in treatment?’ And so, companion studies, as you would say, that look at quality of life, look at side effects, are the kinds of contributions that a nurse scientist makes to an overall team trying to improve cancer care.
Selma R. Schimmel:
Well, obviously we are dealing with difficult economic times, limited federal budgets… How do we assure that there is funding available and how do we also inspire the private sector to contribute support to such science and research?
Kathleen Mooney:
Well, you bring up a really concerning problem, from my perspective. Right now, with the economic status in the country, the congressional call to trim budgets; one of the budgets that is currently proposed for trimming is the National Institute of Health’s budget, of which cancer funding comes up. We don’t know how it will turn out but a current proposal has cutting out a million dollars or a billion dollars, excuse me, a billion dollars this year out of that budget. And that’s where research funding comes from cancer so we are at a crossroads of challenge to, ‘how do we keep funding going?’ and funding is competitive. You have to have the cutting edge science. That’s another one of the points in the talk that I made today is, we really have to come up with the compelling questions for which we want to invest in, and that is of concern. Nurses have to work to get the message out that the science that they are pursuing is valuable and important, just as trying a new drug trial to slow down cancer growth, finding a treatment for the symptoms related to that that improve quality of life is important. I like to say that the life you save has to be worth living. And the nurse scientist comes in and tries to work in tandem to help that life be very valuable.
Selma R. Schimmel:
What do you think that patients need to understand, not only about the role of the oncology nurse, but what can we do as patients and consumers, medical consumers, to really help support the nurse scientist/researcher agenda? What can we do at large to support your efforts?
Kathleen Mooney:
Well, I think patients, family members, the public has to say the research is valuable, that the experience of being a family member with people dealing with cancer, that research that focuses on symptom improvement, quality of life, is essential.
Selma R. Schimmel:
So, that said, if you could give, a retrospective overview of what do you think were some of the benchmark, most important, key studies that you know that oncology nurses have made a real impression with?
Kathleen Mooney:
Oncology nurses were early in the attention to symptoms. Now that goes way back a number of years, a study that showed that fatigue was the most important symptom associated with radiation. Radiation oncologists didn’t even believe patients had fatigue and when you’d talk to them about it they’d say, ‘well, what do you mean by radiation fatigue?’ And so, just surfacing that symptoms were a tremendous issue for patients to deal with has been a contribution really started by nursing.
Selma R. Schimmel:
And I imagine that when you look at the different nursing specialties across disease types, oncology probably represents one of the most vital and expansive areas where nurse scientists and researchers have been able to make a big difference.
Kathleen Mooney:
I’m proud to say that I think oncology nursing has the best nurse scientists, has made the greatest impact, has kind of shown the way for other specialties on how to pursue that. Even the Oncology Nursing Society, the foundation, and their seeding of pilot funds has been really remarkable and a leader in nursing in the specialty community.
Selma R. Schimmel:
I’m smiling because I think about going back many, many generations prior to us, how proud Florence Nightingale would have been to see the days when she could recognize like the importance of just having a sterile environment to today.
Kathleen Mooney:
She was the first nurse scientist, you know. And she was the first statistician and she observed. She observed and she was shot down many times by the medical community and she pursued by force of her personality.
Selma R. Schimmel:
I’m glad we brought her into this conversation because it’s even emotional, really, I think, as I’m not a nurse. But when you think about, also, how you’ve all broken through the glass ceiling, and also people perceive nurses in one way and now you see men that are nurses and nurses are really dominating a profession and reshaping it and molding it in ways that will not only impact oncology, but will affect all of the other nursing disciplines, too. So, thank you so much.
Kathleen Mooney:
Thank you for having me.
Selma R. Schimmel:
Kathy Mooney, from the University of Utah, the College of Nursing.
END OF VIDEO