POGO Supportive Care Guidelines Influence the Care of Children with Cancer
The POGO Supportive Care Clinical Practice Guidelines Program provides healthcare professionals in Ontario and worldwide with the best options for managing the side effects of cancer and improving the health and quality of life of children with cancer. These Guidelines translate the current evidence into recommendations for daily clinical practice. For example, in POGO's most recent guideline on managing fatigue (published in the medical journal Lancet Child & Adolescent Health), physical activity is strongly recommended as a way to help ease this common and distressing symptom. It further recommends that physical activity should suit each patient’s specific needs, likes and abilities. The POGO Guidelines team based this recommendation—one of four—on research with adults that showed the consistent benefit of physical activity, and the universal availability, low risk of harm and low costs of fitness options. The fatigue guideline was developed by a multidisciplinary and multinational group of experts, together with childhood cancer survivors.
More about Supportive Care Clinical Practice Guidelines
Supportive care helps manage cancer’s side effects
Supportive care is the prevention and management of the adverse effects of cancer and its treatment, which means managing the side effects of cancer and cancer treatment. Supportive care includes preventing and treating infections, reducing nausea and vomiting, as well as managing psychosocial issues, including depression, anxiety, and caregiver distress.
Clinical Practice Guidelines improve outcomes
Guidelines provide a way of translating evidence into clinical practice. Across clinical specialties, treatment according to guidelines has been shown to improve outcomes. Providing evidence-based supportive care for healthcare teams has the potential to optimize treatment outcomes, reduce suffering, and improve the quality of the cancer treatment journey for children with cancer.
POGO’s Clinical Practice Guidelines are internationally endorsed
In its short duration, the POGO Guidelines Program has been extremely successful. In addition to the newly released management of fatigue guideline, POGO has published six Guidelines. Five have been endorsed by the Children’s Oncology Group (COG). This means that links to the guideline recommendations are now embedded into the COG’s trial protocols. Endorsements by other organizations, nationally and internationally, include the Canadian C17 Network, the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology and the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer.
POGO’s Clinical Practice Guidelines fill a void
POGO’s Clinical Practice Guidelines are incredibly important for healthcare teams because very few evidence-based supportive care guidelines exist that specifically focus on children with cancer. POGO’s Guidelines are informed by parents who rank the treatment-related adverse effects as most severe and concerning to their children, and by pediatric oncology healthcare providers who have identified topics for which guidance is most needed.
Read all of POGO’s clinical practice guidelines
POGO Celebrates Pediatric Oncology Nursing Excellence with Bruna DiMonte
"Excellence in oncology nursing is about demonstrating a high level of compassion, empathy and pediatric oncology specialty expertise in caring for kids with cancer and their families. Nurses incorporate evidence-based literature and research in our clinical practice, and we are excellent resources to allied health teams and the field of pediatric oncology. We advocate for resources to meet the challenging needs of kids with cancer, families, pediatric oncology nursing and the childhood cancer care system."
Data Drives Practice
These days, my work at SickKids overlaps with my data management role at POGO. In both organizations, I lead teams responsible for capturing data in our POGONIS database. This data—clinical information that includes specifics about children’s diagnosis, treatment, complications and long-term outcomes—is used by POGO and our system partners for cancer surveillance, research, decision-making, system and program planning and evaluation, and policy advice.
Her Passion for Her Patients and Work as a Pediatric Oncology Nurse
My early career was devoted to working on the frontlines and in doing so, I always strived to provide compassionate care to kids with cancer. While it’s hard to choose, I would say that one of the most rewarding things was finding time in my day to play with a child and distract them from the complex cancer treatment I still had to provide. Every day brought a new set of challenges and however a child’s story played out, my only hope was that I had made a positive difference in their life and their family’s.
POGO Values Pediatric Oncology Nurses
I have had the pleasure of helping POGO support pediatric oncology nurses in making valuable contributions to the pediatric oncology community. I am the staff representative on the POGO Nursing Committee and have worked with Committee members on such special projects as POGO guidance documents about telephone practices (telepractice) and the safe handling of antineoplastic agents. The Committee has also had the opportunity to contribute to publications, abstracts, presentations at conferences of health organizations like the Association of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nurses (APHON), The International Society of Pediatric Oncology (SIOP), and POGO education events like AfterCare Education Day, the Annual Multidisciplinary Symposium on Childhood Cancer and Nursing Pre-Symposia education events. Through POGO, pediatric oncology nurses also have the opportunity to advocate on a policy level, and in the past actively supported POGO’s recommendation of the nurse coordinator position and acquisition of the Interlink Nursing program. POGO also proactively seeks preceptorships with nursing student placements at the POGO office and with the POGO Interlink Nurses at their hospitals.
Other Career Achievements of which Bruna is Most Proud
This is another difficult question as I have had many wonderful opportunities to support novice pediatric oncology nurses, as well as data managers and researchers. I hope I have helped empower others to provide excellent clinical care. And, in collaborating with researchers using POGONIS data for epidemiological research and data analysis, I hope I have adequately supported their policy planning and program development goals for pediatric oncology, and inspired them to collect accurate provincial population data for these needs.
Bruna DiMonte, RN, BScN, has been a pediatric nurse for 36 years and has spent 28 of those working double duty at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto and with POGO as the Senior Database Administrator and Privacy Officer
