Challenging the status quo
DFCI Trustee Richard Cantor and his late wife, Phyllis, helped launch the center.
Nursing research as it is known today, Bauer-Wu notes, began developing in the 1960s, when education for nurses moved from a hospital-based model to one featuring classroom instruction and academic degrees.
The seeds of this change, however, had been planted a century before by Florence Nightingale, a pioneer in nursing and health-care reform. She used statistical data to show that unsanitary conditions in British hospitals led to preventable deaths, and spearheaded the use of statistics to measure social phenomena.
In the spirit of Nightingale, Dana-Farber nurses have long challenged the status quo in clinical practice. But it was not until the Cantor Center's creation that the Institute had a formalized nursing-research program. The center honors the memory of Phyllis Cantor, a breast cancer patient who believed that outstanding nursing care such as that she received both at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital affects patient-family experiences and outcomes.
"She came to the conclusion that there was a right and wrong way to carry out procedures, and that the right way should be taught to everybody," her husband, DFCI Trustee Richard Cantor, recalled during a recent luncheon celebrating the center's progress. "Doing so, she felt, would help improve the quality of life for many."
The center — one of several similar programs nationally — first took shape in 1999, when the Cantors met with Dana-Farber leaders to discuss creating a vehicle to generate and apply new knowledge in nursing care. Its growth accelerated when Bauer-Wu, then at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, became its first director in May 2001. She brought to her new role 12-plus years of clinical nursing experience in oncology, psychiatry, and hospice care.
Conferring with clinicians, researchers, and leaders throughout DFCI, she identified needs and looked for opportunities for collaboration across Harvard-affiliated institutions. "A year later, we invited external advisors to evaluate the Cantor Center and offer advice for moving forward," recalls Bauer-Wu, whose own research interests include women's cancer survivorship and complementary therapies.
"The heart of what we do is to examine ways to reduce suffering for those challenged by cancer and thus improve their quality of life."
—Susan Bauer-Wu, DNSc, RN
Less than three years later, she is one of four nurse-scientists on the center's staff, along with Margaret Vettese, PhD, RN; Mary Cooley, PhD, RN, CS; and Marsha Fonteyn, PhD, RN. Vettese focuses on end-of-life decision making, while Cooley's primary interest is symptom management in lung cancer patients (see sidebar: Project aims to help patients 'cross bridge' to cancer survivorship). Fonteyn, the newest addition, is interested in promoting critical thinking and the use of research results in nursing practice.
The center's projects are funded by outside sources, such as the National Cancer Institute, and by internal ones including the Friends of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which recently aided Deady's Port-A-Cath study. Most of its research is both quantitative, which uses objective instruments such as surveys to yield data, and qualitative, which often involves personally interviewing patients and analyzing their responses.
"Our research methods are similar to those used by other investigators throughout DFCI; they are scientifically rigorous and produce valuable information," says Cantor Center Project Director Martha Healey, RN, MSN, FNP. "But we bring a nursing lens to the questions, taking a more holistic approach. Instead of looking at a particular disease, we'd consider its impact on the whole person."
According to DFCI President Edward J. Benz Jr., MD, the center's establishment "represents a major step on the way to making nursing research a prominent part of our organization — and to making the Institute a prominent part of nursing research in cancer."
- Next: To partner and pursue
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