From Framework to Practice: An Educator’s Perspective
By Nikki Dean, Chair, CNSA Education Standing Committee
For nurse educators, frameworks are only useful if they help people make decisions. Capability frameworks provide nurse educators with a structured way to define, develop, assess and advance the knowledge, skills and attributes required for nursing practice. Clearly defined capabilities across levels and domains of practice guide nurses in their development, support educators in developing curricula linked to capabilities, and support health service leaders in workforce planning. Ultimately, this enables continued delivery of evolving models of care and excellence in contemporary cancer nursing practice.
The 2025 Cancer Nursing Workforce Survey reflected a workforce with a strong commitment to learning. Among respondents with postgraduate qualifications, 79% had completed a cancer-specific qualification, while 30% of all respondents reported their intention to undertake postgraduate education within the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, only 30% of respondents strongly agreed that they received adequate education support from their organisation. Respondents identified the need for enhanced access to continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities, and highlighted barriers including financial support and access to leave.
CPD and training are a necessity for the nursing workforce. To ensure safe, quality patient care, education must be valued and supported at every level. The 2026 Cancer Nursing Education Position Statement by the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC) made it clear that nurses have a responsibility to seek out and engage in educational opportunities, but employers and institutions share responsibility for ensuring a well-prepared workforce.
That shared responsibility is vital. Nurses require access to CPD, supervision, support and time to establish the required capabilities for practice at every level, across all domains of practice, and this must be understood, valued and supported to ensure we have the required workforce capability for now and into the future. AusCaN provides a contemporary roadmap and common language to enable us to continue to plan, conduct and evaluate education and training and continue to advocate for supported learning pathways, removing barriers to access.
One of the strengths of AusCaN is that it is not designed as a universal one-size-fits-all, tick-box approach. The capability statements provide a framework that can be contextualised to different nursing roles and clinical services.
A nurse beginning practice in cancer care will need broad essential knowledge and skills including awareness of guidelines, standards, and best practices relevant to caring for people affected by cancer across prevention, treatment, symptom management, communication and supportive care. A nurse working in a cancer service may need more specific and specialised capabilities relevant to specific tumour streams and treatment modalities. A nurse working towards a specialised level of practice may also be developing capability to lead quality and safety initiatives, skills to contribute to education programs, whilst learning to critically appraise research evidence. An advanced nurse may require capabilities to lead innovation, lead people, develop and influence policy, design and deliver learning programs, conduct research or practice with greater autonomy. A highly experienced nurse may change their practice context from inpatient to ambulatory care, move into a new clinical service or tumour stream, or transition from clinical practice into clinical education or research. They will always bring substantial capability, whilst also developing new knowledge and skills for their context.
AusCaN supports a realistic view of professional growth. The levels of Essential, Specialised and Advanced help describe the progression of knowledge, skills and attributes, but this should not be interpreted as a hierarchy. Development and progression across a cancer nursing career is not always about role progression; it is about depth of knowledge and skill. Career advancement is often lateral, perhaps staying and growing in a role, expanding and advancing capabilities across domains of practice.
The four domains broaden the education conversation
Clinical Practice is understandably the largest and most familiar domain, but contemporary cancer nursing requires more than clinical knowledge alone.
The Education domain recognises that every nurse contributes to learning. This may involve educating a patient or family, teaching a colleague, preceptoring a student, contributing to or designing a teaching session or learning program, or leading organisation-wide capability development and higher education programs.
Leadership and Management are also relevant at every level. Clinical leadership is present when a nurse advocates for a patient, mitigates risk and raises a safety concern, coordinates care, or contributes to a positive team culture. Cancer nurses are driving change across the health system, leading and supporting activities that improve the safety and quality of cancer care outcomes, and leading national and international policy. Leadership is not reserved for nurses in management roles; however, equally, Nurse Managers are vital to our services and require specific support to develop capabilities to assure quality and safety in our health services, resource stewardship and people leadership to ensure nursing teams are supported to thrive.
Research and Innovation are vital to cancer nursing practice. Cancer nurses are consistently aligning their practice to the best available evidence, consuming, critically appraising and generating new knowledge and evidence through research. Educators have an important role in supporting nurses to develop confidence in appraising evidence, evaluating practice, and contributing to practice change.
This is what AusCaN describes and roadmaps. These domains help education programs move beyond clinical technical tasks and reflect the full professional role capabilities of cancer nurses.
How educators can begin
The starting point does not need to be complicated. Download the Framework and become familiar with its structure. Discuss it with nurses, educators, managers, and service leaders. Ask where it aligns with what your service already does well and consider where it exposes a gap. Existing programs can be mapped against the framework This does not mean every program must address every capability. It means being explicit about what a learning activity supports and where nurses can go next.
Educators and leaders can also use the Framework to structure development conversations. Guiding reflection on current capabilities and where the opportunities are to build new capabilities, what experiences would help them progress, and what support is required.
For leaders, AusCaN can also inform workforce planning and team capability analysis. A service may identify strong clinical expertise, but limited capacity in leadership, research, education or service improvement. That creates an opportunity to develop people and services strategically, rather than waiting to be exposed through a vacancy or crisis.
Consistency without losing context
National consistency does not mean making every cancer service identical. A large comprehensive cancer centre, regional cancer unit, community service and general hospital will have different workforce models and different education needs. The value of a national framework is that these different settings can work from the same underlying language while applying it locally. This is consistent with the 2026 Cancer Nursing Education Position Statement by the ISNCC that cancer nursing education should be evidence-based, flexible, culturally sensitive and adapted to local priorities.
The Framework creates opportunities for collaboration. Educators do not need to independently build every required resource from the beginning. Through shared education mapping and identifying national, state and territory, and organisational level learning resources that can be shared through the CNSA’s new Cancer Nursing Learning Hub on Florence, will help create visibility of what is already available for cancer nurses and educators, reducing duplication and making high-quality education more accessible. Ongoing discussions through Communities of Practice, and education collaborations and partnerships support our shared goals, whilst supporting national education resource stewardship.
Collaboration matters particularly for nurses outside major metropolitan centres, where access to specialist education, mentorship and professional networks may be more limited.
Building the pathway together
Education is one of the clearest ways to translate AusCaN from a publication into improved patient outcomes. When education is contextual and aligned to required capabilities for practice, education programs have an incredible impact on individuals, services and the health system, creating a learning environment where nurses can readily engage, scaffold and apply fresh learning.
This milestone brings opportunity, and this next stage will require partnership between nurses, educators, academics and leaders across universities, health services, and the CNSA. If we work together, we can help create education and training pathways that are easier to navigate, connected to practice at all levels and domains, and more responsive to a workforce that is continually changing.
Further reading:
- CNSA. Australian Cancer Nursing Capability Framework. First edition. 2026. Available at: https://www.cnsa.org.au/implement/auscan.html
- CNSA. Cancer Nursing Workforce Survey 2025. [Unpublished raw data].
- ISNCC. Cancer Nursing Education Position Statement. 2026.Available at: https://isncc.org/Position-Statement.
- Thamm C, et al. Cancer Nursing Frameworks to Guide Clinical Capability, Education and Careers: A Scoping Review of the International Literature. J Adv Nurs. 2025 Jul;81(7):3504-3527. doi: 10.1111/jan.16657. Epub 2024 Dec 9. PMID: 39651683.