Each month, UI Hospitals and Clinics recognizes the contributions of its nursing staff by featuring an in-depth interview with a nurse. What follows is from an interview with Linda Moeller, RN, BSN, who works in the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Linda Moeller didn’t always want to be a nurse. As a college undergraduate at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, she majored in music and planned for a career as a music teacher—until a life-changing employment opportunity came along.
“Just by happenstance, the summer after my freshman year, a friend of mine had an uncle who was an administrator for a county nursing home,” she says. “He offered us jobs for the summer as nursing assistants. It didn’t take long—the light bulb went off and the passion began. I transferred to Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids to major in nursing, and I’ve been on this path ever since.”
Linda has been a nurse for 27 years, and she has worked in a variety of professional roles—as a staff nurse, a nurse manager, and an administrator in staff development. She’s spent the majority of her career at UI Hospitals and Clinics, including the past 10 years at the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, where today she works as a staff nurse. She also serves as an adjunct instructor in nursing at Mount Mercy.
Tell us about your experience working with cancer patients and their families.
You know, a very wise nurse told me when I first came to work with cancer patients, “Once you work with this patient population, you’ll never want to work with any other.” At the time, I didn’t quite understand what she was referring to, but it’s true. They’re an inspiring group of patients. I often feel that they give back more than what I give them.
As a nurse at the Holden Cancer Center, you have an opportunity to do pretty much everything you are trained to do. I have the opportunity to do the hands-on nursing care that is so important. There is also the technical aspect with the chemotherapy drugs. There is an educational component with a lot of patient and family teaching. And then there’s the emotional and spiritual part of caring for patients, as well. For me, it’s everything that I had hoped for when I began my nursing career.
Tell us about the independent project you're working on as part of a leadership program for the hospital.
Here’s what it is: Patients who are undergoing cancer treatment should be as active as they can, because exercise has been proven to combat a lot of the adverse side effects of cancer treatment—things like fatigue, but also nausea, sleeping problems, and other issues. With every one of these, except for fatigue, you can give the patient a medication or offer concrete suggestions. But fatigue is a really difficult side effect to manage, and it’s the number one complaint of cancer patients going through chemo and/or radiation.
While exercise helps combat fatigue, many patients tend to not want to do any form of exercise during their cancer treatment. After all, they’re tired and often they just want to rest. There are a lot of exercise programs out there for cancer patients, but they tend to be at the end of their treatment process. A better approach is for patients to begin an exercise program at the beginning of their course of cancer treatment.
Here at the University, we don’t have a program for this. A few other institutions across the U.S. do, but this is kind of the new way of thinking. That’s the brainchild for this project—what I call Energy Through Motion.
We enrolled 18 patients last fall.... We meet with them, discuss the benefits of exercise, and provide them with an incentive bag that includes items to help them begin an exercise routine at home—some general information, but also things like a pedometer, a resistance band, and a T-shirt, for example.
As a way to support the patients—since they are not actually coming here to do their exercises—I arranged for Mount Mercy College nursing students to provide weekly follow-up phone calls to the patients. The students track the patients’ symptoms and offer assistance and encouragement. What we hope is ... we’ll have data that helps demonstrate the benefit of an exercise program for the patients. Ultimately we’d like to be able to roll this out to all newly diagnosed cancer patients throughout the Holden Cancer Center.
How strenuous an exercise program are you talking about for these patients?
We’re talking low to moderate exercise—walking, biking, or swimming, for example. There’s a great mental component to this program—the patient feels like he or she has some control in the treatment and management of their cancer. And what we’re finding is that when a patient buys into the exercise program, his or her spouse and/or family members do, too—which is good for everyone.
Of course, there are going to be days when patients don’t feel their best and do not want to exercise, and we let them know that this is OK, too.
Sounds like it’s coming along nicely.
Yes…I’m hopeful that this project can demonstrate to the administration and hospital leaders the value of supporting projects like this. There are a lot of really good ideas out there that don’t cost a lot but can really impact our patients’ lives. That’s the bandwagon I’m on.
Editor's Note: In May 2010, Linda and her colleagues were awarded a $2,000 grant from the Daisy Foundation to cover patient supplies and other expenses for a year.
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