Wendy H Oldenmenger

Erasmus MC | Erasmus MC · Department of Medical Oncology

Purpose The objectives of the study were to determine the prevalence of (uncontrolled) OIC, relevant medications / interventions employed by healthcare professionals, and the additional strategies utilised by patients, amongst European patients with cancer pain. Methods This study was a prospective observational study conducted at 24 research site...

Cancer pain is a common symptom in patients with cancer and can largely affect their quality of life. Pain management is important to minimize the impact of pain on daily activities. Cancer nurses are significantly involved in all steps of pain management and contribute to the success of therapy through their knowledge and expertise. While they gen...

Objective The Covid −19 pandemic has had a major influence on the organization of cancer care. Little is known about how patients with cancer and their relatives experienced this period. This study explored these experiences and levels of distress and resilience of Dutch cancer patients and their family caregivers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Met...

Purpose: Cancer has a major impact on the individual patient and their family, especially children. However, little is known about the needs of adolescents (10-19 years) whose parent is diagnosed with cancer, especially breast cancer. Insights into psychosocial needs are important to develop appropriate guidance and support for these adolescents....

A successful career in cancer nursing requires a commitment to lifelong learning. Mentoring can be accomplished through formal programs and informal relationships, both of which are based on mutual respect, trust, and a willingness to learn.We developed our mentor-mentee relationship during the time in four phases: Phase 1 was to get to know each o...

Purpose Until today, it is not clear why patients decide to continue with early clinical trial (ECT) participation. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore to which extent the self-determination theory of Ryan and Deci, according to the ECT enrollment phase, corresponds to the motivations of participants during ECT’s. Methods This study has...

Cancer nursing has evolved to meet the demands of rising cancer incidence, newer and more complex treatment options, and the emergence of specialist roles supporting patients from pre-diagnosis, through treatment, survivorship and end of life care. Nurses are involved in direct and in-direct care of people at risk of, and living with and after canc...

Objectives: There is little research to help health care professionals understand what patient outcomes are considered a priority in advanced liver or kidney cancer. Knowing what is important to patients can help promote person-centered approaches to treatment and disease management. The aim of this study was to identify those patient-reported out...

Purpose Until today, it is not clear why patients decide to continue with Early Clinical Trial (ECT) participation. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore to which extent the self-determination theory of Ryan and Deci, according to the ECT enrollment phase, corresponds to the motivations of participants during ECT’s. Methods This study has...

Background Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are key indicators of health status and functioning, coming directly from the patient. Comprehensive monitoring of PROs enables implementation of person-centred care. Currently, the PROs that patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) consider of greatest importanc...

Background Evidence for effectiveness of nurse-led interventions FOR cancer-related symptoms is of variable quality. This study aimed to identify, appraise and evaluate the nature and effectiveness of nurse-led interventions on symptoms for people with cancer. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ten major databases were searched (2000 t...

Background Patients with glioblastoma have a short life-expectancy, with median survival rates of nine to twelve months. Providing information about the expected course of disease can be complicated. Therefore, an online tool has been developed. The objective of this tool is to better inform patients and proxies, and decrease their uncertainties an...

Background: The supportive needs for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients during the vulnerable period after treatment are not always met. Therefore, more professional support regarding physical, social, and psychological care as well as lifestyle is recommended. Objective: This study is an evaluation of a nurse-led aftercare intervention to supp...

Background Patients with glioblastoma have a short life-expectancy, with median survival rates of nine to twelve months. Providing information about the expected course of disease can be complicated. Therefore, an online tool has been developed. The objective of this tool is to better inform patients and proxies, and decrease their uncertainties an...

Background: Complex survivorship cancer care requires nurse-led interventions. Therefore, a nurse-led patient navigation intervention was developed in which trained cancer nurses gave advice and referred to other professionals during the process of recovery and rehabilitation of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) patients. Objective:...

Purpose Cancer nurses across Europe are being tasked with delivery of an increasing number of complex treatments and supportive care interventions as a result of ongoing advances in cancer research, and a rise in cancer incidence due to demographic changes. However, all health systems delivering cancer treatment innovations require access to an edu...

The global oncology nursing workforce is essential to achieving Sustainable Development Goals 3.4 (reduce non-communicable disease morbidity by a third by 2030) and 3.8 (universal health coverage). Unfortunately, challenges to a robust oncology nursing workforce include nursing shortages, recruitment barriers (eg, perceptions of a demanding special...

Oncology nurses are at the heart of tackling the increasing global burden of cancer. Their contribution is unique because of the scale and the diversity of care roles and responsibilities in cancer care. In this Series paper, to celebrate the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, we highlight the contribution and impact of oncology nurses al...

Background Patients with advanced cancer are increasingly expected to self-manage. Thus far, this topic has received little systematic attention. Aim To summarise studies describing self-management strategies of patients with advanced cancer and associated experiences and personal characteristics. Also, to summarise attitudes of relatives and heal...

In this chapter we focus on online symptom monitoring and management, addressing potential advantages and challenges, considerations regarding methodology and technology, handling the results, and improving symptom management. There is a huge variation in the content of the various symptom monitoring systems and their efficacy is not fully proven y...

Context: Essential for adequate management of breakthrough cancer pain is a combination of accurate (re-)assessment and a personalized treatment plan. The Breakthrough pain Assessment Tool (BAT) has been proven to be a brief, multidimensional, reliable and valid questionnaire for the assessment of breakthrough cancer pain. Objectives: The aim of...

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translate...

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translate...

Aim: To explore the differences in perceived patient safety culture in cancer nurses working in Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Design: An exploratory cross-sectional survey. Methods: In 2018, 393 cancer nurses completed the 12 dimensions of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture. Results: The mean score for...

Objectives At the end of life oral fluid intake is often reduced. Consensus about the most appropriate management for terminally ill patients with limited oral fluid intake is lacking. The objective of this study is to investigate to what extent the amount of fluid intake, preceding and during the dying phase, is related to the occurrence of death...

Introduction: For adequate pain treatment in patients with cancer, it is important to monitor and evaluate pain regularly. Although the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) is implemented in hospitals in the Netherlands, pain is still not systematically registered during outpatient consultations. The aim of this study was to assess whether home telemonitori...

824275_Supplemental_table_1 – Supplemental material for Development and validation of search filters to find articles on palliative care in bibliographic databases

Abstract After publication of this supplement [1], it was brought to our attention that in abstract 11, the author affiliation No. 1 is incorrect. It should be ‘Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Research Centre Innovations in Care, Rotterdam, The Netherlands’, but not ‘Department of Healthcare & Welfare, NHL University of Applied Sciences,...

Background Healthcare professionals and researchers in the field of palliative care often have difficulties finding relevant articles in online databases. Standardized search filters may help improve the efficiency and quality of such searches, but prior developed filters showed only moderate performance. Aim To develop and validate a specific sea...

Over 90% of patients treated for head and neck cancer with curatively aimed chemo or bioradiotherapy will develop painful mucositis and xerostomia. Sublingually delivered fentanyl (SDL) is a rapid acting opioid to treat breakthrough pain. It is unclear how SDL is absorbed by the mucosa of these patients. Therefore, the aim of this study was to inve...

Background Advances in research and technology coupled with an increased cancer incidence and prevalence have resulted in significant expansion of cancer nurse role, in order to meet the growing demands and expectations of people affected by cancer (PABC). Cancer nurses are also tasked with delivering an increasing number of complex interventions...

Objectives: To provide insight into people's experiences in dealing with the consequences of head and neck cancer (HNC) in daily life and their needs for self-management support. Sample & setting: 13 people with HNC who were successfully treated in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherla...

For advanced cancer patients deliberating early clinical trial participation, adequate information about expected effect on quality of life (HRQoL) and hope, may support decision making. The aim was to assess the potential relation of HRQoL to eligibility for phase‐I trial participation, and to observe the variations in patient‐reported outcomes. P...

The transdermal fentanyl patch is widely used to treat cancer-related pain despite its wide inter- and intrapatient variability in pharmacokinetics. The aim of this study was to investigate whether smoking and body size (i.e. body mass index) influence fentanyl exposure in patients with cancer. These are factors that typically change during treatme...

Protocol BMI smoking. (DOC)

Trendstatement_TREND_Checklist BMI smoking.pdf. (PDF)

Background: Advances in research and technology coupled with an increased cancer incidence and prevalence have resulted in significant expansion of cancer nurse role, in order to meet the growing demands and expectations of people affected by cancer (PABC). Cancer nurses are also tasked with delivering an increasing number of complex interventions...

Background and objectives: The cutaneous fentanyl patch is widely used to treat continuous pain in patients with cancer. Its use is hampered by a high inter- and intrapatient pharmacokinetic variability. Factors that influence this pharmacokinetic variability are largely unclear. The aim of these studies was to test if common patient variables, i)...

Background In the outpatient setting, pain management is often inadequate in patients with cancer-related pain, because of patient- and professional-related barriers in communication and infrequent contacts. The internet may provide new opportunities for monitoring these patients. PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate whether internet...

Background: Despite existing guidelines to assess and manage pain, the management of cancer-related pain is often suboptimal with patients often being undertreated. Inadequate pain management may be due to patient-related barriers. Educating patients may decrease these barriers. However, the effect of pain education on patient-related outcomes is...

Aim: To identify, appraise and synthesise the available evidence relating to the value and impact of cancer nursing on patient experience and outcomes. Background: There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance and contribution of cancer nurses, however a comprehensive review examining how cancer nurses have an impact on ca...

Background: For patients with a hematological malignancy, allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) is a treatment modality that may cause a wide range of problems. Little is known about the process of recovery and rehabilitation and the problems that alloSCT patients are confronted with during the first-year posttransplant. Objective: This...

Pijn komt nog altijd veel voor bij patiënten met kanker. Het doel van behandeling is de pijn op een acceptabel niveau te brengen met aanvaardbare bijwerkingen. In 2016 is de herziene versie van de evidencebased richtlijn Diagnostiek en behandeling van pijn bij patiënten met kanker uitgekomen. In deze e-learning worden vijf onderwerpen uit de richtl...

Background: Inadequate adherence to prescribed analgesics may be one of the reasons why patients with cancer experience unrelieved pain. Adherence is directly influenced by patients' barriers about pain management. Patient pain education programs (PEPs) have been developed to reduce patients' barriers and increase patients' adherence to their anal...

Background: For patients with cancer-related pain, the numeric rating scale is the most frequently used instrument to measure pain intensity. In the literature, it has been suggested to interpret patient-reported ratings of pain in relation to the pain intensity which is acceptable to the individual patient. Aim: We aimed to examine the feasibil...

Background In the outpatient oncology clinic, pain management is often inadequate. Incorporating a systematic pain management program into visits is likely to improve this. We implemented an integrated program, including a structured pain assessment, pain treatment protocol and patient education module. In the present study, we investigated whether...

Literature data on the tolerability of opioids in patients with cancer-related pain is limited. Here we report a systematic review including all published prospective studies reporting adverse events (AE's) of morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl, methadone or hydromorphone for cancer-related pain in patients naive for these opioids. We included 25 studie...

PURPOSESeveral guidelines on the treatment of cancer-related fatigue recommend optimizing treatment of accompanying symptoms. However, evidence for this recommendation from randomized clinical trials is lacking. We investigated whether monitoring and protocolized treatment of physical symptoms alleviates fatigue. PATIENTS AND METHODS In all, 152 fa...

CONTEXT: To improve the management of cancer-related symptoms, systematic screening is necessary, often performed by using 0-10 numeric rating scales. Cut points are used to determine if scores represent clinically relevant burden. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this systematic review was to explore the evidence on cut points for the symptoms of the Edmont...

Cancer is a growing problem. In the Netherlands, the twenty years prevalence of cancer is rising during the years. In 1990, 223 540 persons were living with cancer (twenty years prevalence). In 2002, the twenty years prevalence was 386 361 persons, and in 2010 540 371 persons. The prevalence of cancer increased with 3% – 3.5% per year since 1990. T...

Pain education programs (PEP) and pain consultations (PC) have been studied to overcome patient-related and professional-related barriers in cancer pain management. These interventions were studied separately, not in combination, and half of the studies reported a significant improvement in pain. Moreover, most PEP studies did not mention the adequ...

The effectiveness of an opioid rotation to parenteral hydromorphone in advanced cancer patients has never been investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the analgesic efficacy and side effects of parenteral hydromorphone on serious cancer-related pain. We included 104 consecutive advanced cancer patients who were extensi...

Palliative sedation (PS) is necessary in a significant percentage of patients dying on an acute palliative care unit (PCU). Common indications are terminal restlessness, pain and dyspnoea. On our PCU, terminal restlessness was the main indication for PS but pain was the most prevalent symptom during admission. Because delirium is often drug induced...

The aim of this paper is to identify the major barriers hindering adequate pain management and critically review interventions aiming to overcome them. We searched relevant literature on PubMed published between January 1986 and April 2007. The most frequently mentioned barriers for both patients and professionals were knowledge deficits, inadequat...

De Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO) omschrijft therapietrouw als de mate waarin het gedrag van een persoon (bijvoorbeeld het innemen van medicatie, het volgen van een dieet en het maken en uitvoeren van veranderingen in de leefwijze) overeenkomt met de aanbevelingen van een zorgverlener. De therapietrouw van patiënten aan langdurige medicatieregi...

The Distress Thermometer (DT) is a promising instrument to get insight into distress experienced by cancer patients. At our Family Cancer Clinic the DT, including an adapted problem list, was completed by 100 women at increased risk of developing hereditary breast cancer (mean age 45.2 years; SD: 10.5). Additionally, the women filled in either the...

Adherence to analgesics in cancer patients has scarcely been studied. In this study, the Medication Event Monitoring System (MEMS) and medication diaries were compared with respect to feasibility and adherence measurements. Forty-six outpatients with nociceptive pain caused by cancer were asked to use MEMS for their analgesics and to record their m...

Insufficient awareness of cancer pain, including breakthrough pain, inadequate analgesic prescriptions, and nonadherence contribute to inadequate cancer pain management. There are insufficient data about the contribution of each of these factors. In a cross-sectional survey among 915 adult cancer outpatients, pain was assessed by the Brief Pain Inv...

Breakthrough pain has been recognized as a challenging pain phenomenon in cancer. Oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate (OTFC) recently has been recommended as treatment, but OTFC is not widely available. Therefore, alternatives are needed. In two separate pilot studies, 58 patients were instructed to self-administer subcutaneous (SC) rescue opioids (...

The initiation of continuous parenteral (subcutaneous or intravenous) opioids or a change of opioid (opioid rotation) are treatment options for patients who fail on oral or transdermal opioids. There are insufficient data on the efficacy of these strategies, and comparative data are unavailable. The authors prospectively evaluated the efficacy of t...