gms | German Medical Science

Background: Nurses working in oncology care have extensive experience in the application of integrative naturopathic interventions for symptom relief and quality of life enhancement in oncology patients. There is a high patient demand for these interventions. However, a lack of external evidence, impedes their use in practice.

Objective: Aim of this poster is to describe a methodology for the systematic development of evidence-based best-practice recommendations for integrative naturopathic interventions, integrating the knowledge of experienced nurses.

Design and methods: The systematic methodological approach presented here consists of three steps:

1.

A scoping review on chosen symptoms

2.

An expert panel consisting of nurses (with/without academic qualification), physicians, and a psychologist - all with naturopathic and/or anthroposophical backgrounds – followed a structured expert consensus process. Interventions were rated for safety, effectiveness (scale from 0 = no effect to 5 = maximum effect), minimum qualification, practical feasibility

3.

An supplementary literature review based on the findings of the consensus conference.

Results: By synthesizing internal evidence with the best available external evidence, statements on the practice and evidence base of naturopathic nursing interventions can be generated and recommendations for action can be made. It represents an extension of the procedure already successfully applied for mucositis, insomnia, hand-foot syndrome and poly-neuropathy.

Conclusion: Including clinical expert knowledge in the development of recommendations in areas where research evidence is scarce is a suitable method allowing practitioners to participate in building the body of nursing knowledge. The developed evidence-based recommendations could be discussed as S1-guideline in the AWMF classification.