Nurses Group Activity Report 2022
EBMT Nurses Group (NG) is committed to patient care through education, research and international network collaboration.
The EBMT NG is one of the leading groups in the field of haematology and HSCT nursing. It is dedicated to improving the care of patients receiving HSCT and promoting excellence in and through evidence-based practice. The NG’s mission is to enhance and value the nursing role all over the world, supporting and sharing knowledge through communication, advocacy, research, training and education.
Major achievements
Education, research, collaboration and advocacy, key pillars of the nurses group mission, have remained firmly embedded in the EBMT Nurses Group activities in 2022. Despite starting the year with many Covid restrictions still in place, the freedoms and connectedness of increasing in person meetings as the year progressed, set 2022 apart from the most recent locked-down years.
Following on from the success of the EBMT Textbook for Nurses, with almost half a million downloads, we undertook the content revision and chapter development for the 2nd edition to be launched at the 49th Annual Meeting of the EBMT in Paris, April 2023. It will be the first of our publications to be fully translated and will be available in French among other languages. This pan-Europe collaboration stands as testimony to the teamwork across our community and the importance of sharing knowledge to improve practice and patient care.
In October 2022 the EBMT Nurses Group Immune Effector Cell (IEC) Forum was launched. It is designed for nurses and AHPS looking after patients receiving Immune effector cells such as CAR-T therapy, anywhere in the patient pathway. The forum can be accessed by anyone with the aim of bringing together nurses and AHPs for discussion, raising questions or topics for the group or expert facilitator, sharing ideas and showcasing learning resources and opportunities.
We have continued to strengthen and develop our connections with nurses throughout our global transplant community through for example, our ongoing projects with nurses in Latin America, representation from the Nordic countries at our annual National Chairs meeting and our special EBMT Annual Meeting grant for nurses from Ukraine. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to collaborate with nurses and physicians in WBMT (World Blood and Marrow Transplant), China, India and South Saudi BMT groups, developing and participating in their education programmes for nurses.
Our E-learning developments have taken a new direction and with the Go-CART partnership, we produced a webinar series on nursing issues in CART and cell therapy. We also kicked off our digital skills project in collaboration with the Trainee Committee. The first of these is ‘in the can’ and will be launched in 2023 once editing is completed.
Looking to the future of transplant and cell therapy nursing, emerging trends and developments, we have successfully appointed two new roles; Working Party Lead Nurse and Next Generation Nurse. Both roles will play a significant part in our upcoming work.
There have been 5 publications involving the Nurses Group, and for study lead or lead authorship notably:
- SFAST longitudinal study of sexual function after transplant,
- the Immune Effector Cell Nursing guidelines and
- the safe transfer of paediatric patients to ICU.