ONS Connect - December 2008 - (Page 13) Wilson meets with staff at different sites whenever possible to discuss cases and potential studies. sonnel. Good communication is essential,” Wilson says. programs to increase participation To increase access to clinical trials in the community, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has developed the NCI Community Cancer Centers Program (NCCCP). This program builds on the 20 years of success of the NCI Community Clinical Oncology Program and is specifically focused on community hospitals. ONS member Kathy Wilkinson, RN, BSN, OCN®, manager of cancer research at the Billings Cancer Center, an NCCCP site in Montana, notes that her program has grown significantly over time. “We have grown our program from 40 clinical trial patients in 2003 to 169 patients enrolled last year,” Wilkinson says. “We have been doing some phase I trials that have been very challenging, where we have many patients calling and wanting to enroll. Usually you have to go out and search for patients, so we have had to develop a process for handling that aspect.” Participating as an NCCCP site has benefited the Billings Cancer Center in several ways. “It helped us to increase our tracking of patient information in ways we really had not done,” Wilkinson says. “When collecting this baseline data, we focused especially on our outreach patient population (the center’s oncologists routinely travel to nine rural hospital sites, which are located 120–300 miles away, each month for clinic sessions) to see how we can increase this group’s accruals to studies. We’ve also started using telemedicine for visits where a study requires “Travel is a significant hardship for folks. . . . In general, the closer to home patients can be, the better,” Wilson says. December 2008 ONS CONNECT 13
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