Background: Women with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) experience unique symptom management and psychosocial needs due to aggressive, yet palliative treatment with a progressive, chronic illness.
Objective: This article describes the effect of a quality improvement project for coordination of supportive care in MBC. Program evaluations included referral rates for supportive services, patient-reported outcomes of symptom distress, generalized anxiety, and overall well-being.
Design: An interdisciplinary Support, Education and Advocacy Program (MBC-SEA) was developed. The 1-hour, weekly, patient review included collaborative assessments to determine needs for social service, psychological counseling, and palliative care. A prospective pre- and postexperimental cohort design with convenience sampling was used. Analysis was conducted with paired t test analysis of pre- and postimplementation outcomes.
Setting/participants: Program outcomes of 118 women with MBC visiting an urban outpatient breast cancer clinic during September 2016 to November 2016 (pre) and January 2017 to March 2017 (post) were evaluated.
Measurements: Referral rates to social work and palliative care, symptom, anxiety, and overall well-being scores.
Results: Following program implementation, referrals to palliative care and social work supportive services increased significantly including patient-reported outcomes symptom distress scores mean difference 1.4 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.4306-2.6428), P = .004; generalized anxiety scores mean difference 1.5 (95% CI: 0.5406-2.5781), P = .003; and overall well-being mean difference of -0.7 (95% CI: -1.3498 to -0.0570), P = .03.
Conclusions: Purposeful nurse-led assessment for social service and palliative care needs increases referrals with improvement in patient-reported outcomes.
Keywords: metastatic breast cancer; navigation; oncology; palliative care; palliative nursing; social work; symptom distress; symptom management.