The changing role of nurses in bone marrow biopsies

The bone marrow biopsy is used to diagnose and manage the treatment of a range of blood cancers. Here, John Murray, a Nurse Clinician at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK, discusses the changing role of nurses in bone marrow biopsies, and other related medical procedures. Approximately 20 years ago, nurses in the UK started having a more prominent role in patient management, including performing blood draws, medicine administration and bone marrow biopsy. In some centres in the UK, you will also find nurse performing bone marrow harvests. Although not as common in the rest of Europe, things are gradually starting to change, and soon we will see more nurses performing such tasks. John Murray, also talks about how doctors and nurses handle the procedure in different ways and his role in the teaching process of other nurses. Recorded at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) in Valencia, Spain.