International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) -
Nursing Leadership Board

Overview
The IMF focuses its efforts in four key areas: Education, Research, Support, and Advocacy. Through these channels, the IMF reaches out to people throughout the world, with the goal of improving the quality of life of myeloma patients while working toward prevention and a cure.

The IMF established the Nursing Leadership Board (NLB) with the purpose of developing broad recommendations for nursing care for myeloma patients. Twenty nurses from leading treatment centers for myeloma patients in the United States were selected to participate in the NLB.

The Challenge
The first goal for the Board was to develop guidelines for nurses on the management of side effects associated with the novel therapeutic agents used in treating myeloma patients in order to help nurses in the community to optimize care.

The Solution
The initial task for the NLB was to identify those side effects which they felt were most crucial: those that seriously affected patients' quality of life and those that could be life threatening. The NLB used Vistacom's audience response system to conduct a rank order prioritization of the top five side effects among the spectrum of side effects previously identified.

Next, they used the audience response technology to conduct a needs assessment to reach a consensus on other concerns relating to the responsibilities of facilities, nurses, and procedures in the care and management of these side effects.

With the main side effects identified and the needs assessment conducted, the NLB began to develop and define position statements along with strategic recommendations on how to treat these side effects, and began the process of establishing guidelines.

How IMF/NLB benefited
Vistacom's audience response rank-order software capabilities enabled the IMF to efficiently identify and prioritize the crucial side effects. Vistacom's services benefited the needs assessment by the speed at which the results were tabulated and the anonymity by which they were collected. In turn, the Board was able to focus more of their discussion and time in developing and evaluating their guideline position statements.

back to top

•