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Most childhood cancer survivors are at risk for late effects related to their cancer treatment, many of which can be serious or life-threatening. Therefore, a vital aspect of nursing care for this vulnerable population includes patient education regarding the importance of targeted health screening, protective health care interventions, and/ or modification of health behaviors in order to allow for early detection or prevention of late complications. A wealth of patient education materials for childhood cancer survivors is now available from the Children's Oncology Group. These materials provide comprehensive information regarding health risks and health protective behaviors and are specifically designed to accompany the Children's Oncology Group Long-Term Follow-Up Guidelines (available at www.survivorshipguidelines.org). Although we have found that these materials significantly enhance care provided in our long-term follow-up program, we have also found that their length and depth may present challenges to clinical application, particularly for patients with limited reading abilities or language barriers. To address this need, the City of Hope Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program has developed an innovative template that summarizes key information from these educational materials. Our template is arranged by system (e.g., ocular, auditory, cardiac) in modular format and includes visual cues (icons) and simple text to assist patients with retention of key content. By using information from our clinic's Microsoft Access© database, the nurse is able to use the template to easily generate a customized teaching tool for each survivor based on their treatment history. In order to meet the needs of our patient population, this teaching tool can be generated in both English and Spanish. The effectiveness of this innovative tool will be evaluated by determining patient adherence to recommended health screening and their understanding of recommended health practices. Childhood cancer survivors are heterogeneous in terms of age, diagnoses and treatment history. The nurse must therefore provide health education that is comprehensive yet individualized, memorable enough to impact patient recall and influence health behaviors, and streamlined enough to address major health risks in a reasonable timeframe. Use of this innovative teaching tool can assist in accomplishing these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]