UCSF

Purpose

Nurses caring for children/adolescents and families in Latin America are challenged to provide optimal care with minimal training. Educational resources are generally in English, and few facilities have sustainable, specialized nurse onboarding or continuing education programs. This project developed a free Spanish-language pediatric oncology nurse training program with three components, foundational onboarding course, continuing education monthly webinars, and specialty course on bone marrow transplant. All addressed inequities of pediatric oncology nursing specialization access required to provide the most effective nursing care across Latin America.

Methodology

The methodology for creating the TeLeo Pediatric Oncology Nurse Training Program followed Kern’s six-steps for curriculum development. Two courses and one continuing education webinar series were developed. Curricula and webinar content were written and taught by regional expert pediatric oncology nurses. Participant satisfaction surveys served for evaluation data.

Results

Five onboarding course cohorts enrolled 3350 nurses, whose feedback informed curriculum modifications and additions. Another 1611 nurses attended the continuing education live webinars. Future content will consider care of underserved populations and challenging issues in the region, e.g., migrants, sexual diversity and gender inequity. Much needed Portuguese programming for Brazilian nurses is under development.

Significance

TeLeo has responded to a significant inequity in access to regional-specific pediatric oncology nursing specialization. TeLeo’s success demonstrates that nurse experts can support large numbers of nurses when governments, hospitals and nursing schools are not yet scaling up to meet the nursing workforce needs to care for this growing pediatric patient population requiring specialized care to survive.