Courage, collaboration, complexity and chemotherapy safety: the view from the sharp end.

The Canadian oncology community was devastated by the news in August 2006 that a patient had died from an overdose of fluorouracil. Where we once thought our checks and balances ensured patient safety, we now knew they were not enough. Practice immediately began to change around the country.

Assessing the reliability and validity of the revised WCCNR stomatitis staging system for cancer therapy-induced stomatitis.

Before developing interventions for stomatitis, nurses require a simple, valid and reliable approach to staging severity. The eight-item WCCNR(R) was previously validated for chemotherapy-induced stomatitis. In this study, the validity and reliability of the WCCNR(R), a shorter three-item tool for staging stomatitis caused by chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or both, was assessed.