SHORT COMMUNICATION Building cancer nursing skills in a resource-constrained government hospital R. M. Strother & Margaret Fitch & Peter Kamau & Kathy Beattie & Angela Boudreau & N. Busakhalla & P. J. Loehrer Received: 10 November 2011 / Accepted: 22 April 2012 / Published online: 8 May 2012 # Springer-Verlag 2012 Abstract Cancer is a rising cause of morbidity and mortal- ity in resource-constrained settings. Few places in the de- veloping world have cancer care experts and infrastructure for caring for cancer patients; therefore, it is imperative to develop this infrastructure and expertise. A critical compo- nent of cancer care, rarely addressed in the published liter- ature, is cancer nursing. This report describes an effort to develop cancer nursing subspecialty knowledge and skills in support of a growing resource-constrained comprehensive cancer care program in Western Kenya. This report high- lights the context of cancer care delivery in a resource- constrained setting, and describes one targeted intervention to further develop the skill set and knowledge of cancer care providers, as part of collaboration between developed world academic institutions and a medical school and governmen- tal hospital in Western Kenya. Based on observations of current practice, practice setting, and resource limitations, a pragmatic curriculum for cancer care nursing was devel- oped and implemented. Keywords Cancer . Cancer nursing . Western Kenya Introduction Concern about the growing impact of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) on global health prompted the United Nations to hold a summit in 2011 on capacity building for NCDs in resource-constrained settings. Cancer, one of the NCDs cited as an underrecognized source of morbidity and mortality in resource-constrained settings, is predicted to increase in incidence, within a decade having 8.8 mil- lion incident cases in the developing world annually [1]. There have been few descriptions in the literature of efforts to build cancer care capacity in these settings; notable exceptions include the St. Jude International Oncology Program and the Ethiopia Breast Cancer Project [2, 3]. Descriptors of capacity development in cancer care nursing in a resource-constrained environment are even more limited [4, 5]. In resource-replete settings, recognition of the unique occupational and patient hazards posed by chemotherapeu- tics led cancer nursing societies to develop guidelines on the safe handling of chemotherapy in the 1980s [6–12]. While certification processes and guidelines cannot comprehen- sively cover all domains of knowledge needed by cancer nurses, professional organizations have used these tools to formalize what an oncology nurse should know and be able to do [13, 14]. Within the scientific literature, no analogous formal recommendations, certification processes, or locally appropriate guidelines for nurses caring for cancer patients in resource-constrained settings have been published. This report offers a snapshot of current cancer care nursing prac- tice in a public hospital in Western Kenya and highlights efforts to develop a curriculum collaboratively between nurses and physicians involved in cancer care in both resource-replete and resource-constrained settings to help guide cancer nursing in a resource-constrained setting. R. M. Strother (*) : P. J. Loehrer Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, USA e-mail: rstrothe@iupui.edu M. Fitch : K. Beattie : A. Boudreau Odette Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada P. Kamau Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret, Kenya N. Busakhalla Moi University School of Medicine, Eldoret, Kenya Support Care Cancer (2012) 20:2211–2215 DOI 10.1007/s00520-012-1482-z