Background: A diagnosis of cancer is a stressful, difficult, and life-altering event. Breaking bad news is distressing to patients and families and is often uncomfortable for the nurse delivering it. Evidence-based communication models have been developed and adapted for use in clinical practice to...

I am a nurse in a bone marrow transplantation unit at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville. We are a high-risk center in the sense that we care for transplant patients who have been denied at other centers. Our patients are very sick with resistant disease and often with...

In 2001, as the Trish Greene Quality of Life lecturer, I described coming to a career crossroads and cited a metaphor from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” realizing that, as I chose to leave the path of bone marrow transplantation clinician and go to that of palliative care nurse, there...

Problem Identification: Identifying people with hematologic cancer who are at risk of deteriorating and dying is essential to enable open, honest discussions, leading to appropriate decision making and effective end-of-life care. Literature Search: PubMed, CINAHL®, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane...