Symptom management excellence initiative: promoting evidence-based oncology nursing practice.

Accessing and using the best evidence for cancer symptom interventions are prerequisites for nursing excellence. To incorporate evidence into direct care practice, staff at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute implemented the Symptom Management Excellence initiative to compare patients' and nurses' reports of their most frequent and highest priority cancer symptoms. Interdisciplinary teams then convened to design and test the feasibility of bringing symptom management evidence into clinical practice. This article describes how the initiative has successfully used patient-reported data, direct-care nurse input, research evidence, and expert opinion to systematically improve cancer symptom management.