Assistant professor is first author on article published in Integrative Cancer Therapies.
Barb Van de Castle, DNP '14, RN-BC, ACNS-BC, OCN, assistant professor, has written an article along with several co-authors, "Nurse-Administered Auricular Point Acupressure for Cancer-Related Pain," that was published in Vol. 22 of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.
The study aimed to (1) examine the feasibility of providing a training course on auricular point acupressure (APA) for clinical oncology nurses to integrate APA into real-world nursing care settings, and (2) examine the effectiveness of APA on cancer-related pain (CRP) under usual inpatient oncology ward conditions. The authors found it is feasible to provide 8-hour training to oncology nurses for mastering APA skills and then integrating APA into their daily nursing care for patients with CRP. Based on the promising findings (decreased pain, improved fatigue and sleep disturbance, and less opioid use), the next step is to conduct a randomized clinical trial with a larger sample to confirm the efficacy of APA for oncology nurses to treat CRP in real-world practice.