Pat Collins, MSN, RN, AOCN, is best known among her colleagues as a driving force behind pain improvement initiatives and palliative care efforts. Collins found her specialty when she had the opportunity to start a new oncology unit at a Chicago-area hospital.

"I loved oncology from that moment," she said. "You build relationships over time. I enjoyed that aspect of nursing. My patients have been my best teachers."

Currently, Collins serves as a consultant for Magnet, pain management, oncology and palliative care at South Miami Hospital. She joined Baptist Health South Florida in 1982 as an oncology team coordinator, eventually becoming an oncology clinical nurse specialist and the hospital's Magnet project director.

Nurse Expert

Collins has made significant contributions in research, publishing, patient advocacy, and professional and community education.

At South Miami Hospital, for instance, she created and led an interdisciplinary pain committee to establish evidence-based guidelines for optimal pain assessment and management. Collins also developed the pain resource nurse program in 1995, a special course that helps RNs become educational resources for their colleagues.

Collins has presented on pain management and palliative care at several conferences in the U.S. and Caribbean, as well as authored textbook chapters and journal articles. She also teaches oncology part-time at University of Miami School of Nursing and has extensive experience as a preceptor/mentor.

Integrative Therapies

Her work as an oncology nurse eventually led Collins to help expand South Miami Hospital's robust behavioral and collaborative medicine program.

"A number of years ago, oncology patients were seeking integrative therapies. They were practicing various [methods] in secret and confiding in me," Collins recalled. "We needed to bring complementary medicine into the open and be educated about what is out there - separate the harmful from the helpful."

Collins, then an oncology clinical nurse specialist, and Sandra Walsh, PhD, RN, a professor of nursing at Barry University, launched a small research study on the hospital's radiation oncology unit.

One day each week, Walsh brought a cart loaded with craft supplies, known as the Art Kart, and offered patients simple watercolor, ceramics or wood-painting projects. The study showed such experiences helped decrease patients' anxiety.

South Miami Hospital folded the program into its behavioral and collaborative medicine program, ultimately expanding the service to include inpatient and outpatient oncology, radiation oncology and antepartum units.

"I remember seeing a patient taking IV pain medication - she had terrible arthritis pain in her hands - and she wanted the Art Kart there every day," Collins recalled. "We were able to cut her medication [by a] third."

The hospital carefully selects integrative therapies and practices backed by clinical research or evidence-based medicine, Collins explained, and services are offered by licensed, certified and registered professionals.