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Teamwork to ease pain

2008.01.07 by Jan Fredrik Frantzen

Palliative care staff at Nordland Hospital in Bodø and the University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø can now share information about radiotherapy for individual patients. This results in better treatment and improved safety for patients.

Electronic interaction ensures better treatment and less pain for cancer patients. To the right is Are Rasmussen from the palliative care unit at Nordland Hospital in Bodø. Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen, NST.

Since the first half of 2007, the oncology and palliative care unit of the Nordland Hospital in Bodø has functioned as a satellite of the University Hospital in North Norway (UNN) in Tromsø.

They provide palliative care (measures to soothe and relieve pain), and the information that Bodø and Tromsø can now share over the health network improves the quality of everyday life for both patients and staff.

Improved quality of treatment

All information regarding the radiotherapy is now entered on the server in Tromsø. When patients are transferred from the University Hospital of North Norway, the palliative care unit in Bodø obtains access to information that has been entered about the treatment that these patients have already received in Tromsø.

This provides rapid access to up-to-date information about the patient's situation for the doctors, physicists and radiotherapists in Bodø, so that they can plan further treatment. The result is a more comprehensive and consistent treatment process, improving both quality of treatment and safety for patients.

"We can now log on to the server in Tromsø and swiftly check the details of the treatment that the patient has received previously. This makes our work a great deal easier, and we can avoid injuries resulting from too much radiation," says Are Rasmussen from the palliative care unit at Nordland Hospital.

It is important to document how much radiotherapy a patient has previously received in each area of the body. Too much radiation can cause injuries of varying severity to different organs, and this can, for example, result in kidney failure.

Results every day

The Bodø satellite treats between 10 and 15 patients every day. New information, such as dose plans for further treatment, is entered from here together with new X-ray and CT images.

In practice, the documentation thus accompanies the patient, and if the patient needs to return to Tromsø, medical staff at the University Hospital of North Norway can quickly access information about what has been done in Bodø.

"Patients may have anything from a few weeks to several years left to live, but what most of them have in common is that the final phase can also result in great pain. Radiation is very effective for relieving this pain. We try to give them better quality of life for the time they have left."

Restricted access provides sound security

"When we enter new information in the system, it is encrypted in the health network, and all activity in the system is logged. We also have only limited access, so that no one can access information about anything other than the radiotherapy for the patient in question."

So it makes the working day of the staff at the palliative care unit in Bodø easier – but most important of all: patients can receive the same palliative care in the Nordland centre as they would have received at the University Hospital of North Norway. For patients, it means a great deal that they can be treated much closer to home for the time they have left.

From project to permanent service

This solution was originally developed and tested in 2002 and early 2003 between the University Hospital of North Norway (UNN) and Rikshospitalet University Hospital in Oslo. In that project, UNN was the “satellite” while Nordland Hospital in Bodø has now taken over this role. The Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine was the project manager in 2002 and 2003.

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