Work in progress: Curriculum reviews and evidence-based teaching materials

The EduCanNURS project aims to improve and harmonise how cancer nursing is taught to undergraduate nursing students. This includes integrating cancer care into nursing curricula across various stages of their education as well as improving their attitudes and reducing possible negative prejudices against cancer nursing. With this work we want to ensure that students are well-prepared for working with cancer patients and survivors. Here is a short summary where we are in the project right now:

Developing evidence-based teaching material

In the project we are developing teaching material for nursing teachers, which is based on the cancer care continuum. The idea is that the nursing teacher can utilise the evidence-based and visually engaging teaching material in their own teaching and thereby implement cancer nursing in the different stages of nursing studies.

The material will be implemented on the ThingLink platform. We are creating eight different cancer patient case scenarios to the platform. The types of cancer selected for patient cases represent the most common cancers globally (WHO 2024). In the case of cancer patients, the nursing teacher can make use of ready-made materials (e.g. podcasts, videos, information boards) or assignments suitable for different courses, such as material produced in the teaching of medication for the treatment of pain in cancer patients or in pediatric nursing for children’s leukaemia.

Reviewing current curriculums

At the same time, we have gathered data for analysing the different cancer care curriculums in the participating universities both in terms of their content and learning outcomes. We have also done an extensive literature review on cancer care undergraduate education. The literature review paper has been submitted to the International Journal of Nursing Studies.

Piloting the material

We will be piloting the teaching material in each participating country at the turn of 2025-2026. The functionality of the material will be assessed in focus groups organized with students and teachers. By the end of the project, we will also be creating recommendations for the further development of cancer nursing education.

 

Written by
Tarja Bergfors, lecturer at Turku UAS
Isa Öhberg, lecturer at Turku UAS
Anne-Mari Seppälä, lecturer at Turku UAS