Recipients of ONS Foundation Funding

Dr. Weber is an innovative nurse scientist, who is committed to improving the quality of life of long-term cancer survivors, particularly prostate cancer patients. A relative newcomer to oncology, his five years in the field have seen the completion of his ONS Foundation funded study, "Dyadic Bonding in Prostate Cancer" that examined the effect of a program of dyadic support for men surviving prostate cancer. He then received further funding from the National Cancer Institute to expand and test the intervention.

The ONS Foundation funding, in addition to an alumni award, the Marie Haug Award from the F. P. Bolton School of Nursing and the Center on Aging and Health at Case Western Reserve University, and a grant from the Midwestern Nursing Research Society, launched his research career by funding his dissertation work. The idea for that first study was generated from a clinical exemplar --prompting the question, "Why do some patients do better than others during their cancer treatment and subsequent survivorship?" Efforts to understand the process of self-efficacy and the effects of support led to the development of an intervention specifically for men with prostate cancer where they were paired with another man who was a trained long-term prostate cancer survivor. His findings included men in the intervention group reported better clinical outcomes as well as improved quality of life, led to larger funding through a R03 award from NCI.

"Logistics" provide the greatest challenge in doing research, Dr. Weber explains. Finding clinical settings for accrual of research participants, gaining access to the potential participants, obtaining clinic staff support for the study and the detail work of implementing the study provide logistical challenges to the nurse scientist. He has found that establishing relationships with staff in the clinical setting are invaluable to getting your research accomplished -taking the time to develop these relationships and getting the staff's investment in the study are important.

If he could begin again, Dr. Weber, now a faculty member at the University of Florida, College of Nursing, would come to cancer research earlier in his career. As a second career person, he came to nursing "later" in his life. His advice to novice nurse researchers is to find a passion for a clinical topic and then find great mentors. He credits his doctoral advisor, other senior nursing researchers and interdisciplinary colleagues for helping him achieve his success thus far -"they demanded excellence but encouraged and mentored."

His hope is that his work regarding supportive interventions for cancer survivors will furnish the evidence-base needed to develop best practices in this area. His work has been important in showing that men not only accepted the intervention and had improved quality of life, but had better functional outcomes as well. The subjects appreciated the one-on-one nature of the dyadic support, and reported that the flexibility of peer support better met their needs versus going to a scheduled support group. Additionally, the trained prostate cancer survivor derived benefit from helping the "new" patient.

Quality of life for cancer survivors is not only an ONS research priority, it is the vision for Dr. Weber as he looks ahead to a productive cancer nursing research career.