Abstract
Purpose
Electronic systems for remotely monitoring symptoms during systemic anticancer treatment are increasingly being used. Some of these systems have features triggering alerts to healthcare professionals for worsening and/or severe symptoms, enabling real-time symptom management. This study aimed at exploring the characteristics and process of real-time alert management as well as its clinical relevance as perceived by healthcare professionals.
Methods
From January until September 2019, a prospective process evaluation was set up to collect data on all alerts and their management. Also, an online survey presenting a selected number of cases was set up to explore oncologists’ and oncology nurses’ perceived clinical relevance of the real-time management of the alerts.
Results
The overall incidence rate of alerts was 1.4%. Of 253 alerts, pain, fever, dyspnea, and nausea were the most prevalent symptoms triggering an alert. The majority of alerts was managed by a nursing telephone consult alone. In 25.3% of cases, clinical examination was deemed necessary to manage the alert. In 148 of the ratings, oncologists and oncology nurses (totally) agreed with the clinical relevance of the real-time management (95.1%). The mean relevance score attached to the cases was 4.51 (±0.80).
Conclusions
The majority of alerts triggered by a mobile tool for remote symptom monitoring during cancer treatment can be managed by a telephone nursing consult and real-time management is evaluated as (very) relevant by the majority of clinicians.
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Change history
16 February 2021
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-021-06064-5
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Funding
The study was funded by the Estée Lauder University Fund.
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Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Conceptualization: Coolbrandt Annemarie
Methodology: Coolbrandt Annemarie, Muylaert Kristof, Vandeneede Evi, Dooms Christophe, Wildiers Hans
Formal analysis and investigation: Coolbrandt Annemarie
Writing—original draft preparation: Coolbrandt Annemarie
Writing—review and editing: Coolbrandt Annemarie, Muylaert Kristof, Vandeneede Evi, Dooms Christophe, Wildiers Hans
Funding acquisition: Coolbrandt Annemarie, Wildiers Hans
Resources: Coolbrandt Annemarie, Wildiers Hans
Supervision: Coolbrandt Annemarie, Wildiers Hans
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The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethics approval
The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of UZ/KULeuven.
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Not applicable. Healthcare professionals participating in the survey indicated their consent to participate as part of the online survey.
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Not applicable. Healthcare professionals participating in the survey indicated their consent for publication as part of the online survey.
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The original version of this article was revised. All author names are inverted and is now corrected.
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Coolbrandt, A., Muylaert, K., Vandeneede, E. et al. Real-time symptom management in the context of a remote symptom-monitoring system: prospective process evaluation and cross-sectional survey to explore clinical relevance. Support Care Cancer 29, 3401–3408 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-021-06029-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-021-06029-8