Yvonne Willems Cavalli
Head of EOC Nursing Area
Since 2005, the EOC Nursing Area has adopted the philosophy of “relationship-based care”. It stresses the importance for health professionals to be able to establish a therapeutic relationship with the people they take care for. One of the responsibilities of consciously
taking this approach to care is to act professionally on the basis of the best knowledge available today. In medicine and nursing this knowledge changes quite quickly.
What was effective until yesterday, may not be effective today. Hence the importance of developing research also in this professional field, to provide nurses with new knowledge useful to adapt their professional intervention to the specificities of each person (personalisation) and consistent with the best evidence of effectiveness available. The nursing research activities, with dedicated resources, were initially started at IOSI in 2010 and whose activity is documented in the EOC scientific reports starting from that year. In September 2016, also on the basis of the experience developed at IOSI, the Centre for Nursing Research (CRI) was established in the EOC Nursing Area, with the mission of: “To promote the development and quality of nursing care in response to the health needs of the population, promoting innovation and nursing research in all clinical realities of the EOC and maintaining a close link between research (theory) and nursing care (practice)”.
Among the main activities of these research centers, which work in close cooperation having a single manager, there are:
- The activation of training/awareness-raising courses on research topics offered to all EOC nurses. This awareness-raising work is of fundamental importance to create that indispensable synergy of thought and action with the clinical realities and the network of experts and clinical specialists present in each EOC hospital.
- Support, if requested, to cultural and scientific production by colleagues (preparation of abstracts, articles for journals, research projects or other).
- The conception and implementation of nursing research projects, using both quantitative and qualitative as well as mixed methodologies.
Research questions arise from clinical questions usually asked by colleagues working in the clinic or by professional management and they are answered through studies
that can be carried out with their own resources or compete for specific funding. The lines of research currently active are as follows:
- A randomized phase III controlled clinical trial to verify the effectiveness of a patch (Mepitel Film) in reducing the incidence of skin lesions in patients with breast cancer under radiotherapy treatment.
- An observational cohort study to detect the incidence of complications (VTE, BSI) related to the use of 3 central vascular catheters (AVI-PICC-CVC).
- A mixed methods study to evaluate the prevalence of the asthenia symptom among IOSI patients and how the symptom is managed by nurses.
- A mixed methods study, to detect the needs and health problems of women who referred to nursing follow-up visits in senology and professional responses given by nurses.
- A mixed-methods feasibility study to improve the management of painful procedures in neonatology and the development of a complex inter-professional intervention.
