What is it like to guide a professional association that serves more than 100,000 oncology nurses? ONS Directors-at-Large Deborah "Hutch" Allen, PhD, RN, CNS, FNP-BC, AOCNP®, Kris Mathey, MS, APRN-CNP, AOCNP®, and Jeanene "Gigi" Robison, MSN, APRN, AOCN®, reflect on how their varied nursing backgrounds and ONS experiences help the ONS Board to support a diverse membership during a conversation with ONS Executive Director Lori Brown. They also shared the professional and personal rewards that nur...
Dec 23, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 239
"Genomics is part and parcel of oncology treatment today. Even if a patient's genomics might not affect the current choice of therapy, it may do so in the future. The use of genomics and biomarkers is just an evidence-based expansion and extension of our previous care," ONS member Kristin Daly, MSN, ANP-BC, AOCNP®, nurse practitioner at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, said in a conversation with Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, oncology clinical specialist ...
Dec 16, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 238
"These policies, procedures, order sets, and algorithms for oncologic emergencies are so important. They give you knowledge in your back pocket: This is the way we're going to treat this, this is the way to quickly respond to this, and this is the way to treat this in the safest way possible," ONS member Cassie Durand, MS, RN, CNS, AGCNS-BC, OCN®, clinical nurse specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Long Island, NY, regional site, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, on...
Dec 09, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 237
"Acknowledge that grief is a reoccurring theme. This isn't something that's a one and done. This is a process that you're going to continue to revisit, and in recognizing that, I think this allows us to be more proactive and responsive to this emotional part of our job," ONS member Carla Jolley, MN, ARNP, ANP-BC, AOCN®, ACHPN, palliative care advanced practice nurse and coordinator for the palliative care consult service embedded within the oncology program at the Whidbey Health Medical Center i...
Dec 02, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 236
"Effective communication with healthcare providers, making informed decisions about their care, and gaining strength through connections to others" are the key aspects of patient self-advocacy, ONS member Teresa Thomas, PhD, RN, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing in Pennsylvania, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, in a conversation about how patients can self-advocate and how nurses can support them. You can earn ...
Nov 25, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 235
"Once patients come out on the other side, nursing care involves understanding how to triage their disease: If they call you with concerns, how would you address those concerns? How would you find out if there's something going on? Just given how acute the onset is, a lot of these patients have some post-traumatic stress disorder, so there's a lot of worried-well conversations, and in outpatients you need to figure out how to coordinate future care given their history of thrombotic thrombocytope...
Nov 18, 2022•24 min•Season 1Ep. 234
"Participating in formal academic degree programs, obtaining contact hours for renewing your certification, peer-to-peer sharing with colleagues—they're all types of education that you can use to be the best version of the oncology nurse that you want to be for our patients," Danya Garner, PhD, RN, OCN®, CCRN-K, NPD-BC, ONS director-at-large from 2021–2024 and associate director of continuing professional education at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, told Jaime W...
Nov 11, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 233
"For those without cancer or other illnesses, we often have a resolution or relief of this fatigue. 'Oh, I'm just going to go to bed early and get a couple more hours of sleep tonight.' Or 'I'm going to have a cup of coffee.' But for people with cancer, it's not an easy fix. People with cancer describe fatigue as something much more long-lasting," ONS member Paula Anastasia, MN, RN, AOCN®, clinical nurse specialist for UCLA Health in Los Angeles, CA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®,...
Nov 04, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 232
"Work culture is really how people work together. But in my opinion, there are three major components: it's the employer, it's the leadership, and it's the staff—all staff, we're not only talking nurses. We know that it takes a village to really make clinical care happen. All three of those components are critical in creating a healthy work environment. The staff component, including the clinical nurses, is key to that," Linda Laskowski-Jones, MS, APRN, ACNS-BC, CEN, NEA-BC, FAWM, FAAN, editor-i...
Oct 28, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 231
"A lot of healthcare workers that I talk to say that they are kind of brought up with the culture that violence is part of the job. It's not your job to take abuse," Chris Snyder, University of Utah Health security manager for the University of Utah Department of Public Safety in Salt Lake City, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, BMTCN®, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. Snyder gave an overview of violence in health care, educational resources for de-escalation strategies, and violence preve...
Oct 21, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 230
"Oftentimes, local policy changes are the ones that are going to influence your day-to-day practice most directly—and are the ones where your voice has the most power because you're closer to the decision makers. There are so many ways for nurses to become involved in advocacy, and it can be simple things just like voting or being knowledgeable on the issues," Erica Fischer-Cartlidge, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, EBP-C, chief clinical officer at ONS, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, BMTCN®, oncology clin...
Oct 14, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 229
"Consider your patient's diagnosis. What kind of cancer do they have? And ask yourself, 'Could this patient be in disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC)? Is there something more that we should be doing or looking at?'" Leslie Smith, RN, APRN-CNS, DNP, BMTCN®, AOCNS®, oncology clinical specialist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. Smith discussed the nursing considerations for the managemen...
Oct 07, 2022•23 min•Season 1Ep. 228
"We found that nurses still needed clarity of terminology and the rationale for germline, somatic, and homologous recombination deficiency testing," ONS member Paula Anastasia, MN, RN, AOCN®, clinical nurse specialist for UCLA Health in Los Angeles, CA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. Anastasia discussed the findings of a July 2022 ONS focus group that she facilitated on PARP inhibitor therapy, biomarker testing and terminology, and oral medicat...
Sep 30, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 227
"Nurses can bridge the information gap and help patients better understand that the information received from next-generation sequencing (NGS) can really help to determine which treatment they will respond best to, if there are therapies that won't be effective, or if there are clinical trials that are open to them based on the results," Danielle Fournier, RN, MSN, APRN, AGPCNP-BC, AOCNP®, CORLN, advanced practice RN in the department of thoracic surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, ...
Sep 23, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 226
"Really knowing these steps can save our own nursing time and save our patient's skin from all the dressing removals. If we're not doing these dressings as much, we're all going to be happier," MiKaela Olsen, DNP, APRN-CNS, AOCNS®, FAAN, clinical program director in oncology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore, MD, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a discussion on the importance of properly changing central line dr...
Sep 16, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 225
What is it like to guide a professional association that serves more than 100,000 oncology nurses? ONS Chief Executive Officer Brenda Nevidjon, MSN, RN, FAAN, and Directors-at-Large Patricia (Patty) Geddie, PhD, APRN, AOCNS®, FCNS, and Danya Garner, PhD, RN, NPD-BC, OCN®, CCRN-K, reflect on their experiences with ONS, how a diverse Board supports a diverse membership, and how you can get involved in ONS leadership. Music Credit: " Fireflies and Stardust " by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative...
Sep 09, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 224
"I think that we as nurses need to advocate when a patient is uncomfortable. And it's not your classic 'pain in my hip' kind of thing. This is a more subtle, 'I can't breathe, I have a sense of impending doom, I'm panicked, I want someone beside me.' It may sometimes appear to be a psychosocial coping issue when it really is a physiologic one," ONS member Brenda Shelton, DNP, RN, AOCN®, clinical nurse specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, MD, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncolog...
Sep 02, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 223
"Let's take time, invest time, in learning more about futility. Let's invest some time in learning more about how to understand our patient's goals, their family's goals, what their values are," Kathleen Turner, BSN, RN, CHPN, CCRN-CMC, clinical nurse in the medical-surgical intensive care unit at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a discussion on a nurse's approach to futility in cancer care a...
Aug 26, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 222
"Our goal in surgical oncology is, of course, to treat the cancer for a cure, but to do it in a safe manner so the patient is able to recover and resume their normal living activities that they had before their surgery," ONS member Lisa Parks, MS, APRN-CNP, ANP-BC, inpatient nurse practitioner of hepatobiliary surgery at the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, Division of Surgical Oncology, at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, OH, told Stephanie Jardin...
Aug 19, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 221
"It's actually the nurse who most often first identifies the subtle signs of sepsis in patients. Trust your clinical judgement," ONS member Laura Zitella, MS, RN, ACNP-BC, AOCN®, nurse practitioner at the University of California, San Francisco, told listeners during a conversation with Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. Zitella explained the nursing and management considerations for febrile neutropenia and what to do if it transitions into sepsis. This episode is p...
Aug 12, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 220
"Using that view of looking at the whole person, we can provide some acupuncture or acupressure to help maybe reduce anxiety, to help them relax a little bit more, settle their thinking down a little bit, and get some improved sleep," ONS member Susan Yaguda, MSN, RN, RN manager in integrative oncology at the Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, NC, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a discussion on using acupuncture and acupressure to man...
Aug 05, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 219
"Saline is very benign and doesn't have any risk of harm for the patient. They're small doses, so we're not worried about sodium or anything. The risk of heparin is actually quite extensive," MiKaela Olsen, DNP, APRN-CNS, AOCNS®, FAAN, clinical program director in oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore, MD, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a conversation about the latest evidence surrounding central venous cathe...
Jul 29, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 218
"Caring for a pregnant patient with cancer is 100% a team approach," ONS member Chandley Silin, RN, FNP-BC, AOCNP®, nurse practitioner at the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, CA, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. During this episode, Silin discussed the care implications for pregnant and postpartum patients with cancer throughout diagnosis and treatment and the importance of involving the interprofessional team and making appropriate referrals for support....
Jul 22, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 217
"What does the patient need to know? What are their knowledge gaps? What are they most in need of? Once you determine the areas you need to pinpoint, branded or nonbranded, then there's resources out there for you to use," Chelsea Backler, MSN, APRN, AGCNS-BC, AOCNS®, VA-BC, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. Backler explained the differences between branded and nonbranded patient education resources, ways for oncology nurse...
Jul 15, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 216
"The nurse is kind of the hub of a spoked wheel. You have your pharmacy and your provider all on the outside edge, but it's the nurse that's connecting all of these different support services together and being the main connection for the patient," ONS member Elizabeth Bettencourt, RN, MSN, OCN®, oral oncolytic nurse navigator at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Sunnyvale, CA, and member of the Silicon Valley ONS Chapter, said. Bettencourt joined Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical spec...
Jul 08, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 215
"Sometimes in our daily routine of taking care of patients, it's more about looking at the treatment side effects. But look at those wide array of symptoms that can present with an oncologic emergency. They will kind of sneak up on you, and as an oncology nurse, we all need to be educated about them," ONS member Diane Cope, PhD, APRN, BC, AOCNP®, director of nursing and oncology nurse practitioner at Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute in Fort Myers told Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN,...
Jul 01, 2022•24 min•Season 1Ep. 214
What is it like to govern a professional association that serves more than 100,000 oncology nurses? ONS President Jeannine Brant, PhD, APRN-CNS, AOCN®, FAAN, and Directors-at-Large Val Burger, MA, MS, RN, OCN®, CPN, and Teresa Knoop, MSN, RN, AOCN®, reflect on their roles in the Board's executive committee, how a diverse Board supports a diverse membership, and how you can get involved in ONS leadership. Music Credit: " Fireflies and Stardust " by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by...
Jun 24, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 213
When it comes to oncologic emergencies, early identification and intervention achieves the best outcomes, but some emergencies are harder to recognize. "Oncology nurses are often the first to pick up on important symptoms of serious complications," Laura Zitella, MS, RN, ACNP-BC, AOCN®, nurse practitioner at the University of California, San Francisco, said. Zitella joined Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, to talk about recognizing less common complications seen in...
Jun 17, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 212
"When we think about how oncology nurses can really be helpful in overcoming barriers to care, it comes back to what we do very well—which is getting to know our patients," David Rice, PhD, MSN, RN, NP, NEA-BC, chief nurse of research and development at the Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center in California said during his conversation with Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. David and Stephanie discussed the nursing considerations for LGBTQIA+ patients with cancer ...
Jun 10, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 211
"We call it an oncologic emergency for a reason. Even though it's usually not life threatening, the longer we wait, the more debilitating and devastating the side effects will be," ONS member Jennifer Webster, MN, RN, AOCNS®, MPH, clinical nurse specialist at Northside Hospital in Atlanta, GA, and member of the Metro Atlanta ONS Chapter, said during her conversation with Stephanie Jardine, BSN, RN, oncology clinical specialist at ONS. The nurses talked about the importance of early identificatio...
Jun 03, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 210
