Background: The quality of patient care is a universal concern among healthcare managers, policymakers and consumers. In order to benchmark and improve patient outcomes and demonstrate the impact of high-quality care provided by ambulatory chemotherapy services (ACSs), it is important to develop patient-reported nurse-sensitive indicators, specific to chemotherapy-related symptoms and experiences of supportive care. This study builds on previous work by Armes et al. (2014) who developed the Patient-Reported Chemotherapy Indicators of Symptoms and Experience (PR-CISE).
Aims: This study aims to explore a range of methodological and feasibility issues that relate to the development and implementation of Nurse-Sensitive Outcome indicators (NSOIs) and associated tools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It also aims to establish whether variability exists in Nurse-sensitive Outcomes (NSOs) amongst ambulatory chemotherapy units in the KSA.
Methods: A feasibility study employed a descriptive, crosssectional survey with two preparation stages. In Stage I, instrument items were developed. In Stage II, the feasibility of delivering the protocol was evaluated and the questionnaire piloted.
Results: The pilot testing of the recruitment, research tools, and data collection process was useful in providing the groundwork. The cross-sectional survey confirmed that survey processes were efficient. Significant differences were observed in the distribution of the severity of symptoms between ACSs in six out of seven studied symptoms.
