The ONS Podcast

"Under normal conditions, EGFR [epidermal growth factor receptor] is in an auto-inhibited state. And it's only when it's needed that it's upregulated. But when you have cancers that there is either a mutation in the EGFR or an overexpression, what you see is a dysregulation of normal cellular processes. So you get overexpression or switching on of prosurvival or antiapoptotic responses," Rowena "M...

"Much like many experienced oncology nurses, I learned how to do IVs with palpation. I got really good at it. And so I thought, there's no way I need this ultrasound. But we know now that our patients are sicker. There are more DIVA patients, or difficult IV access patients. We've got to put the patient first, and we've got to use the best technology. So I've really come full circle with my thinki...

"There is an old saying that if you ignore your teeth, they'll go away. I think that's a true, true statement. People may think they can get away without daily hygiene. I think that's kind of important, that you should at least get your teeth taken care of at least once or twice a day by brushing and flossing. I mean this has been proven. Our dental people have really taken the lead on preventive...

"CDK4/6 inhibition is considered to be a milestone in the realm of targeted breast cancer therapy. The combination of CDK4/6 inhibitors with the endocrine therapy has really emerged as the foremost therapeutic modality for patients diagnosed with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, advanced breast cancer," ONS member Teresa Knoop, MSN, RN, AOCN ® -emeritus, independent nurse consultant in Na...

"Nurses really are the professionals who educate how to take these medicines, why we use multimodal therapies, why it isn't medicine alone—helping patients to understand that pain is a biopsychosocial spiritual phenomenon, and the pills are just going to hit one little aspect of that entire phenomenon," Judy Paice, PhD, RN, director of the cancer pain program at Northwestern University Feinberg Sc...

"One of the biggest things we've heard in nursing school and we continue to hear in practice is it takes anywhere from 15 to 20 years for knowledge in the literature to reach practice in a significant way. The DNP was designed to speed that up. We don't want the best practices in literature to take 15 years. We want it to take 1 or 2 at best," James Q. Simmons, DNP, AG/ACNP-BC, acute care nurse pr...

"The reality is that we are responsible for creating a culture of safety together for everybody in the clinical area. We have to think not only about ourselves and our personal risk, but how exposure to these hazardous drugs persists in the work environment for everybody. And we have to be part of the solution for everybody, even if it's not something that we're personally really worried about bei...

"One of the things that's really challenging with these BRAF inhibitors, plus MEK inhibitors, is that there's a huge scope of potential toxicity, and they're not all going to happen. So I think that there's a real need to educate patients that they need to work with us so that when a toxicity develops, we can help address it. We can help think of strategies, whether it be medication strategies or...

"Supportive personnel have a great ability to connect with patients and peers, and if that's utilized effectively, it will make a great, great, great, great place to work, with great people to work with, because utilizing the supportive personnel and the great connections that they have, assistive personnel are kind of a lot of times the middle piece, and we don't utilize it in that way," Danielle...

"It's not often in life that you find something that gives you this feeling, but I'm really so fortunate to have found mine, and I know this is only just the beginning, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds. I definitely owe a lot of that to the Oncology Nursing Society for opening up all those doors for me and really getting me into this field." Samantha Paulen, BSN, RN, told Jessica Mac...

"One of the big misconceptions is that this is just a quick shot. And this is a patient's treatment regimen. So, it is not just a quick shot. It is treatment, and we need to get it where it is supposed to go so that the patient's, cancer treatment is not impacted," Caroline Clark, MSN, APRN, OCN ® , AG-CNS, EBP-C, director of evidence-based practice and inquiry at ONS, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN,...

"These evidence-based standards provide a great framework for best practice in cancer care and the 2016 publication is extensively referenced. However, patient care mistakes and medication errors still happen. So, it's imperative that we review the current literature and look for new evidence that's been published," ONS member MiKaela Olsen, DNP, APRN-CNS, AOCNS ® , FAAN, clinical program director...

"A lot of the efforts have been made to improve the patient experience for these treatments, as they can be given for years at a time. For example, when leuprolide debuted way back in 1985, it was a daily injection. But four years later, they developed the monthly depo formulation. Now we have formulations that are approved for administration once only every three, four, and even six months," Andr...

"Instead of creating silos, how can we work together, create networks, and elaborate more in the future? Because we have such a robust wealth of knowledge and expertise, that ONS is very good at helping to facilitate that," Jan Tipton, DNP, APRN-CNS, AOCN ® , clinical assistant professor in the School of Nursing at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCN...

"I think poor discharge planning is that top contributor [to readmission]. And by that, I mean discharge planning that doesn't assess a patient's educational level, their support at home, what resources they have, like transportation and finances, and then to go further, evaluating if the patient even understand the reason they were admitted and then how to manage their care once they leave. There...

"I think we're in a scientific golden age for prostate cancer and probably cancer as a whole, but we're talking about prostate cancer today. So I'm excited to be sitting on the front lines, seeing the new ways that we can help our patients. But I do still think CYP17 inhibitors will continue to be one of our main weapons against prostate cancer for a very long time," Andrew Ruplin, PharmD, clinica...

"In my role as an associate editor, I truly felt like I was bringing the voices of nurses who were new to oncology or new to writing forward. I was able to provide a venue for those oncology nurses who also wanted to bring forward some of the cool quality improvement projects that they were working on. I was really happy to share that knowledge through this role, so that all the other institutions...

Episode 319: Difficult Conversations About Pregnancy Testing in Cancer Care "For people diagnosed with cancer that are of childbearing potential, we have to consider how [pregnancy] testing could impact them. So we never know what someone has been through, and it's important to lead with empathy while providing education of the importance of this testing. So someone may find now that pregnancy tes...

"We put into effect a program that supports guaranteed mobilization of every patient at least twice a day, which is such a huge change from where we were before, where patients were maybe getting out of bed just to go to the bathroom or maybe just to sit in the chair for one meal a day. So it really had a huge impact on overall mobility," Jennifer Pouliot, MSN, RN, OCN ® , clinical program directo...

"I was in this really unique space of being 19. So I'm over the 18 cut-off of peds but diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, but I was an adult. I was able and supposed to be making my own decisions but treated in a pediatric setting. And not everybody in that setting is expecting to talk to someone who is educated and understands what's going on," Alec Kupelian, a cancer survivor and operations and progr...

"Estrogen plays a key role in promoting the proliferation of normal and breast cancer epithelium. So now we have gone from focusing just on the estrogen to also look at estrogen receptors on breast cancer cells and targeting that—and now even to a point of looking at the downstream effects of when the estrogen binds to estrogen receptor of those signaling pathways," Rowena "Moe" Schwartz, PharmD,...

"I think the reality is that we as humans are having a human experience, some of which is incredible and some of which is terrible. And to deny ourselves the opportunity to feel any of those emotions would be to deny our own human experience. And so processing feelings, and I think the bigger ones in particular, like grief, especially in the work that we do, it's not only good to do, but it's part...

"Transfusion safety is really a registered nurse activity, and I just continue to reiterate the blessing of nursing assessment, getting those vitals before the transfusion, and then monitoring them closely and stopping the transfusion if they have a reaction, because that's really an assessment, and we can't delegate that to nonlicensed staff. And so that's really why we just celebrate that nurses...

"Of all the eight different pulmonary toxicities you and I have talked about over these two different podcasts, they're all very different etiologies and treatments. So, we went everywhere from infection and good stewardship with antibiotics to pulmonary GVHD to diffuse alveolar hemorrhage. And I think that's what's the hardest part for us as nurses. It's not just one thing that's causing it, and...

"I think a virtual nurse can have the same sort of presence that a bedside nurse does. I like to think of a virtual nurse as pulling up a virtual chair next to that patient and spending time to ask questions and engage with them," Laura Gartner, DNP, MS, RN, NEA-BC, associate chief nursing informatics officer for inpatient shared services and north region at Jefferson Health in the Philadelphia, P...