A cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming. Nurse navigators offer much-needed service and support to help prevent patients from becoming overwhelmed by uncertainty, appointments, diagnostics, treatment, their job, and financial concerns, as well as the psychological impact of a serious diagnosis. Cancer patient navigators provide education, advocacy and support while facilitating the process of cancer care.
But the job of a cancer patient navigator can be challenging. The complexities of health care, the gravity of a cancer diagnosis, and the growing number of cancer patients served by the health system can create enormous stresses on all involved, including the cancer patient navigators. This can lead to burnout which could threaten the ability to recruit and retain those performing this critical service for cancer patients. OSF HealthCare has 15 cancer patient navigators at its largest hospital, Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois. Each navigator specializes in serving patients with specific types of cancer.
At any point in time, one navigator in a specialty might have much more work than others in the same specialty. However, OSF cancer patient navigators typically do not transfer care to another navigator when workloads are heavy, because they seek to maintain consistent patient relationships throughout the care journey. Within these constraints, a team led by OSF’s Senior Fellow for Innovation, Jonathan Handler, MD, sought to develop a solution to better balance workloads among cancer patient navigators within a cancer specialty.
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The team included researchers from OSF Healthcare and its OSF Innovation group, the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The team developed a model to predict the upcoming week’s work for each navigator’s existing patients and for new patients needing navigation. A second model then distributes the new patients among navigators within a specialty to minimize differences among those navigators in their upcoming week’s workload. The model makes the predictions using data already contained in a patient’s electronic health records, such as demographics, cancer type, and prior health care utilization.
“Our cancer patient nurse navigators are highly dedicated, and their workload can sometimes be overwhelming. They never want to shortchange the patient, so they shortchange themselves, working extra hours and sacrificing their own well-being to help patients. We hope our system can even out those workloads and improve their work-life balance.”
– Dr. Jonathan Handler, OSF Healthcare Senior Fellow, Innovation
SOURCE: PRNewswire