Getting to know Clinical Nurse Consultant Hayley Beer
3 min read 05 April 2023
We interviewed Hayley Beer, Clinical Nurse Consultant in the haematology stream to understand more about her role and the value of nurse led research to improve patient outcomes.
How long have you been at Peter Mac?
Been at Peter Mac since: I started at Peter Mac in 2017 but I had been working at the Royal Melbourne Hospital since 2004 in the oncology team.
Tell me a little bit about your role and what you are about to embark on:
I am a Clinical Nurse Consultant working in the Myeloma and Autograft stream. My clinical work includes patient and family preparation for complex therapies; assessment and management of disease and treatment-related side-effects and survivorship care. As a Nurse Consultant, research is also a key component of my role and a passion of mine. I am looking forward to embarking on my Master of Philosophy at Melbourne University in Graduate Research this year.
Building research capability among clinical nurses is essential to the delivery of safe and efficient care. My interest in nurse-led research started with a project I was working on to teach patients to self-inject subcutaneous therapy at home. Patients would sometimes spend all day travelling into Peter Mac, waiting for their appointment to receive an injection that would take 30 seconds. I had come to really understand and appreciate how important time was for these patients living with an incurable cancer and wanted to find a way to help them spend more time with loved ones and family, rather than in the hospital.
I set up a simple but impactful study to survey patients about their view regarding home or hospital-based administration of the injection and 80 percent said they would be happy to do the injection themselves at home. This led to the development of a nurse-led model of care that included teaching patients how to inject and manage any side effects and symptoms associated with the subcutaneous therapy, remotely. Because this innovation was in place before the pandemic hit, it allowed a lot of patients to stay home without compromising their care. The nurse-led service resulted in removing three out of four hospital visits for patients.
I am really proud that my research has a tangible and timely impact on patient care, and has driven me to explore other opportunities for nurse-led research. I am particularly interested in improving patient experience by examining the impact treatments have on quality of life for patients in real-world settings. This will take into account social determinants of health and what matters most to patients to ensure they have the best experience and outcomes of care possible. I recently completed a study with colleagues from the Academic Nursing Unit (Holly Chung, Mei Krishnasamy). We asked people living with myeloma to review ten commonly used patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to help us better understand which suites of measures comprehensively capture what matters most to them regarding their quality of life. We now have a collection of three PROMs endorsed by patients for use in future studies. I have recently submitted a manuscript for publication reporting on this Australian first collaborative study.
Nurse-led research is under-resourced and under-represented nationally and internationally, but at Peter Mac, we are making inroads to address this significant gap. I’m so grateful for the support and encouragement of Professor Mei Krishnasamy who has really inspired me to progress this pathway and I hope I can encourage other nurses to do the same.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I really enjoy the flexibility to care for patients at any time point, whether it is at home or in the ward, getting to know the family and carers. As a Nurse Consultant you get to build relationships, see things through and find ways to make the experience of care and living with incurable cancer better for patients. Nurses are essential members of a patient’s multidisciplinary team. They bring a different but complimentary insight to a patient and family’s needs, and that mix of insights is key to delivering the best outcomes possible.