Dietitians in regional areas work across many clinical streams, with oncology patients comprising only part of their workload. They manage patients from several tumour streams, across all stages of treatment, and often virtually due to the large geographical area covered. Dietitians in Murrumbidgee, Western and Far West NSW Local Health Districts (LHD), who cover an area of 570,191 square kilometres, identified a need to upskill in oncology nutrition to enhance patient care. Following a successful grant submission, they engaged the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Nutrition Department to develop a virtual oncology nutrition seminar aimed to upskill clinicians in managing patients with cancer.
Methods: An online needs assessment was conducted to inform the content of a full day virtual oncology nutrition seminar. Following the seminar, attendees completed an online evaluation.
Results: Thirty-six dietitians, working across all settings, completed the needs assessment. A majority had >5 years’ experience (61%), spending <25% of their time managing oncology patients (72%). Upper and lower gastrointestinal, and head and neck were the tumour streams respondents requested education on, with areas of interest being managing short and long-term side effects, nutrition in palliative care, and enteral nutrition in oncology. Fifty dietitians attended the full day virtual seminar. Evaluations, completed by 70% of attendees, indicated confidence levels in managing oncology patients increased from 3.6 to 4.0 following the seminar. Attendees strongly agreed they had adequate knowledge to nutritionally manage a variety of oncology patients (average 4.1/5), knew where to access oncology resources (average 4.3/5) and could apply their learnings to their own work setting (average 4.3/5). Attendees reported the virtual delivery of the seminar adversely affected their learning experience due to technical difficulties and limited interactions.
Conclusions: A virtual oncology nutrition seminar can increase the confidence and knowledge of clinicians to manage oncology patients, but has particular challenges.