Nursing interventions to improve the health of men with prostate cancer undergoing radiotherapy: a review.

The aim of this study was to investigate what nurses do to improve the health of men who are receiving radiotherapy treatment due to prostate cancer. The method was a literature review using a systematic approach. The Cochrane Library, Medline and CINAHL databases were used in a search that covered the period from January 1994 to April 2006. The screening of 200 abstracts resulted in 14 articles corresponding to the research question, which were assessed according to scientific quality. Two independent reviewers performed the screening and quality assessment process using specific protocols. Two themes emerged: nurse-led care related to radiotherapy treatment and patients' experiences of radiotherapy treatment. The results show that there is strong scientific support for nurse-led follow-up care aimed at assisting patients by means of providing information on how to manage side effects (evidence grade A). In addition, there is moderate scientific support for the need to ensure that this information is structured, objective and concrete and that it can be provided by means of audiotapes or over the phone (evidence grade B) as well as weak scientific support for reporting patients' experiences of radiotherapy treatment (evidence grade C).