Rationale.Many cancer patients and survivors do not meet nutritional and physical\nactivity guidelines, thus healthier eating and greater levels of physical activity could\nhave considerable benefits for these individuals.While research has investigated cancer\nsurvivors� perspective on their challenges in meeting the nutrition and physical\nguidelines, little research has examined how health professionals may assist their\npatients meet these guidelines. Cancer nurses are ideally placed to promote healthy\nbehaviours to their patients, especially if access to dieticians or dietary resources is\nlimited.However, little is known about cancer nurses� healthy eating promotion practices\nto their patients. The primary aim of this study was to examine current healthy\neating promotion practices, beliefs and barriers of cancer nurses in Australia andNew\nZealand. A secondary aim was to gain insight into whether these practices, beliefs and\nbarriers were influenced by the nurses� hospital or years of work experience.\nPatients and Methods. An online questionnaire was used to obtain data. Sub-group\ncancer nurse comparisons were performed on hospital location (metropolitan vs\nregional and rural) and years of experience (<25 or�25 years) using ANOVA and chi\nsquare analysis for continuous and categorical data respectively.\nResults. A total of 123 Australasian cancer nurses responded to the survey. Cancer\nnurses believed they were often the major provider of nutritional advice to their\ncancer patients (32.5%), a value marginally less than dieticians (35.9%) but substantially\nhigher than oncologists (3.3%). The majority promoted healthy eating\nprior (62.6%), during (74.8%) and post treatment (64.2%). Most cancer nurses\nfelt that healthy eating had positive effects on the cancer patients� quality of life\n(85.4%), weight management (82.9%), mental health (80.5%), activities of daily\nliving (79.7%) and risk of other chronic diseases (79.7%), although only 75.5%\nagreed or strongly agreed that this is due to a strong evidence base. Lack of time\n(25.8%), adequate support structures (17.3%) nutrition expertise (12.2%) were cited\nby the cancer nurses as the most common barriers to promoting healthy eating to\ntheir patients. Comparisons based on their hospital location and years of experience, revealed very few significant differences, indicating that cancer nurses� healthy eating\npromotion practices, beliefs and barriers were largely unaffected by hospital location\nor years of experience.\nConclusion. Australasian cancer nurses have favourable attitudes towards promoting\nhealthy eating to their cancer patients across multiple treatment stages and believe\nthat healthy eating has many benefits for their patients. Unfortunately, several\nbarriers to healthy eating promotion were reported. If these barriers can be overcome,\nnurses may be able to work more effectively with dieticians to improve the outcomes\nfor cancer patients.
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