A review of anemia management in the oncology setting: a focus on implementing standing orders

Abstract

Standing orders serve an important role in various healthcare settings by empowering nurses to implement certain procedures and activities on behalf of physicians, enabling more immediate interventions, and ultimately improving patient care. Standing orders are based on established clinical practice guidelines and are well suited for supportive interventions. Several evidence-based clinical practice guidelines are available for the treatment of anemia in patients with cancer. The guidelines can serve as a basis for the development of standing orders for the management of treatment-related anemia in patients with cancer, which will enable the delivery of consistently high-quality care to patients. A major advantage to the implementation of standing orders is that patients with suboptimal hemoglobin levels can be treated by oncology nurses in a timely manner and receive high-quality care that is consistent with available clinical evidence.