A nurse navigator led lung nodule service; creating a gold standard in education and patient safety

<bold>Background:</bold> In November 2022, with project funding from the Thames Valley Cancer Alliance, an Incidental Pulmonary Nodule Service (IPNS) team of nodule navigators, chest radiologists and respiratory physicians was established. The service now manages approximately 2000 patients under nodule surveillance. To ensure a safe and reliable service, we designed a novel educational package for navigators to learn to triage and manage referrals, using a clinical simulation platform, <italic><bold>www.raiqc.com</bold></italic>, a web-based PACS simulator which can host diagnostic quality CT scans and allows creation of structured reporting templates which can be used for training and assessment purposes. <bold>Methods:</bold> An educational package was created, comprising of: 1.A teaching module 2.A training module (comprising 58 CT cases with clinical vignettes) requiring the user to categorise incidental pulmonary nodules (IPNs) and recommend next steps, with immediate feedback provided on each case. 3. An assessment module (comprising 111 cases) where users test and evidence how well they can categorise solid IPNs, with a summary of their accuracy provided on module completion. Alongside the training package, the navigators received weekly teaching sessions with a thoracic radiologist for 4 months, including training on the indications and use of nodule volumetry software. <bold>Figure 1</bold> shows a screenshot of the teaching package platform. <bold>Results:</bold> Outlined in Table 1 <bold>Conclusions:</bold> This is the first educational package to our knowledge to standardise teaching and training for IPNs. The package can be used by allied health care, trainee and non-thoracic radiologists and physicians to create a gold standard in nodule assessment and management.