ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic created limited hands-on clinical experience for nursing students due to challenging staffing shortages and restrictions of non-essential personnel. Future nurses require engagement with patient care to develop hands-on skills, cultivate clinical judgment and build critical thinking. The role of a nurse technician allows centers to hire students enrolled in an accredited nursing program into a nursing supportive role. Nurse technician programs can help with staffing needs while also providing opportunity for future nurses to learn the care of oncology patients. The purpose was to develop and implement a program for nurse technicians to be incorporated into care delivery for patients in an ambulatory oncology clinical setting. An NCI-designated cancer care center identified an opportunity to leverage nurse technicians originally brought into the temporary vaccination clinic to transition to a formal oncology nurse technician role. The staff education team partnered with clinic leaders to assess needs and feasibility for the nurse technician role and partnered with local universities to recruit nursing students interested in oncology to apply to the program. Upon closure of the vaccine clinic, two junior nursing student technicians were retained and transitioned into hands-on patient care in ambulatory oncology clinics. A comprehensive orientation plan was built for subsequent nurse technician cohorts to assist registered nurses in the specialized care of oncology patients. The first cohort of nurse technicians were hired to assist in a temporary vaccine clinic in March 2021 (6). Two subsequent cohorts were hired in January 2022 (4) and June 2022 (4) to exclusively train into Infusion and Bone Marrow Transplant clinics. Of the 14 total nurse technicians hired between March 2021 and June 2022, 7 have graduated nursing school and obtained their RN licenses. Upon follow up with these 7 graduates, 5 (71%) were hired into oncology nursing roles upon graduation. Previous nursing supportive roles in the center only included certified nursing assistants and medical assistants. Incorporating nurse technicians is an innovative approach that has mitigated nursing support staffing shortages while providing future nurses with hands-on patient care experience at a time when clinical exposure has been seriously limited by the pandemic. Although nurse technicians are temporary roles while candidates complete nursing school, the program has demonstrated promising recruitment opportunity to captivate and inspire the next generation of future oncology nurses.