The Effectiveness of Nursing Case Management for Lung Cancer Patients in a Taiwan Medical Center

Purpose: The study is to investigate the effectiveness of nursing case management for lung cancer patients in a Taiwan medical center. The outcome variables include of percentages of patients accepted treatment in our medical center, average lengths of stay, unplanned re-admission rate, average admission times of emergency department per year, percentages of patients rejecting treatment, completing rate of treatment, withdrawing rate of treatment, improving rate of patients' treatment compliance, patients' satisfaction with healthcare, and staffs' satisfaction with case management.

Methods: The study will employ a quasi-experimental research design. The patients with new-diagnosed lung cancer and accepting case management will be assigned to the experimental group； The patients with new-diagnosed lung cancer in the period of one year ago and without accepting case management will be assigned to the control group；The third group is the patients with non-new-diagnosed lung cancer and with accepting case management. The staffs are the doctors within the lung cancer medical team.

The lung cancer case management database, patients' satisfaction questionnaire, and staffs' satisfaction questionnaire will be used to measure the effectiveness. Statistical software SPSS for Windows version 17.0 will be used to analyze the data.

Expected results: The research outcome will to confirm the impact of case management on the lung cancer patients and could be the reference data for future cancer case management model.