Spotlight
Living with Cancer
| USF News
Susan C. McMillan
Photo by Eric Younghans | USF Health
Researchers in the USF College of Nursing are studying a novel intervention that teaches cancer patients to manage their highest priority symptoms.
The three-year study, funded by a $2 million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), is being led by USF Distinguished Professor and Thompson Professor of Oncology Nursing Susan C. McMillan.
“Improving cancer patients’ ability to self-manage difficult symptoms may diminish patient suffering, improve quality of life, and decrease emergency room visits and allocated healthcare costs,” McMillan says. “We hope that this intervention will be as successful for patient self-care as it has been when implemented with caregivers of hospice patients with cancer.”
Learning to manage symptoms early on is key as more and more people live with cancer.
“For most patients in the U.S. today, cancer is becoming a chronic condition,” McMillan says. “Cancer may be a life sentence, but for most people it is not a death sentence.”
The brief intervention, known as COPE, teaches cancer patients strategies to alleviate moderate to high-intensity cancer symptoms such as fatigue, pain, dry mouth and difficulty sleeping, which cause distress and interfere with patients’ lives. The study will also examine the frequency and intensity of symptoms.
The USF College of Nursing was one of 51 PCORI award recipients. In total, PCORI awarded $88.6 million in the current round of funding to support patient-centered comparative clinical research effectiveness projects. The only other new PCORI award in Florida went to H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute to study a navigator-guided psychoeducational intervention for prostate cancer patients and caregivers.
The USF study, now in its early phase, seeks to enroll 450 cancer center outpatients with breast, colorectal, lung and prostate cancers. McMillan is working with co-investigators Cindy Tofthagen from the College of Nursing; William Haley, Brent Small and Daniel Meng from the School of Aging Studies; and Dr. Shirley Codada from Moffitt Cancer Center.