Episode 344: ONS 50th Anniversary: Founding Leaders’ Vision and Challenges, Then and Now
The ONS Podcast
“Who would think that we would be here 50 years later? And with the excitement that I think will build even more, I’m so humbled and honored to talk to young nurses. And their excitement—the same excitement that we had in the very beginning—is inherent. I hope that our legacy will be that we are able to pass on this tremendous gift of our careers to new nurses,” Cindi Cantril, MPH, RN, OCN®-Emeritus, founding ONS member and first vice president, told Darcy Burbage, DNP, RN, AOCN®, CBCN®, chair of the ONS 50th Anniversary Committee, during a conversation about the history of...
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Episode 343: Cancer Cachexia Considerations for Nurses and Patients
The ONS Podcast
“There’s actually quite a bit of debate about what the clinical definition of cancer cachexia is, but in its simplest definition of cachexia in this case is cancer-induced body weight loss. You can have cachexia in other diseases, for heart failure or renal failure, but it's basically tumor-induced metabolic derangement that leads to inflammation and often anorexia, which produces body weight loss,” Teresa Zimmers, PhD, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about cancer cachexia. Music Credit: “” by Kevin...
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Episode 342: What It’s Like to Serve on the Leadership Development Committee
The ONS Podcast
“The Leadership Development Committee (LDC) is one of the most important member volunteer positions in the organization, and here’s why: The main purpose of the LDC is to recruit, vet, and select ONS Board of Directors. As some of you may know, it has been three years since we moved away from members voting for directors,” ONS member Nancy Houlihan, MA, RN, AOCN®, 2020–2022 ONS president and former director of nursing practice at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a...
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Episode 341: Pharmacology 101: HER Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
“Key thing here is that it was discovered that when you have gene amplification of HER2 you get a resultant overexpression of that HER protein and that overexpression leads to a driver for certain cancers. So, when you have an overexpression of HER2, it leads to the cancer being more aggressive,” ONS member Rowena “Moe” Schwartz, PharmD, BCOP, FHOP, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about HER inhibitors. Music Credit: “” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution...
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Episode 340: What It’s Like to Plan an ONS Conference
The ONS Podcast
“Don’t be afraid of applying, even if you’ve never planned a conference before, and you think, ‘Well, I have no idea what I’m doing.’ You probably know more than you think you do. You probably have more connections than you think you do, and it is such a worthwhile experience,” Colleen Erb, MSN, CRNP, ACNP-BC, AOCNP®, hematology and oncology nurse practitioner at Jefferson Health Asplundh Cancer Pavilion in Willow Grove, PA, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, BMTCN®, conferences oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a conversation about serving on a planning committee...
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Episode 339: A Lesson on Labs: How to Monitor and Educate Patients With Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“The nurse’s role in monitoring the lab values really depends on the clinics you're working at, but really when our patients are receiving treatment, especially in the infusion center, the nurses should be looking at those lab values prior to treatment being started,” Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, clinical nurse specialist at Karmanos Cancer Center in Michigan told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS during a conversation about how to monitor and educate patients with cancer. Music Credit: “” by Kevin MacLeod ...
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Episode 338: High-Volume Subcutaneous Injections: The Oncology Nurse’s Role
The ONS Podcast
“Although the patient is spending a little less time in the clinic, the administration actually requires the nurse to be at the chairside the entire time. This has allowed nurses to spend potentially uninterrupted time to sit and converse with the patients that they may not have had with an IV infusion. It’s been a wonderful unintentional outcome from the development of the large-volume subcutaneous injections,” Crystal Derosier, MSN, RN, OCN®, clinical specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, MA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing...
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Episode 337: Meet the ONS Board of Directors: Haynes, Wilson, and Yackzan
The ONS Podcast
“The gravity of the responsibility was realized when you walked into the boardroom and you’re there to make decisions, and the perspective you have to take shifts. Of course, I bring to the table my expertise and my perspective, but the decision-making and strategy behind it is really geared at sustaining the organization and moving us towards our mission, which is to advance excellence in oncology nursing and quality cancer care. Being able to reframe your perspective a little bit around those decisions is something that you don’t realize until you’re there to do that,” ONS...
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Episode 336: Pharmacology 101: EGFR Inhibitors
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 “Moe” Schwartz, professor of pharmacy practice at James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, BMTCN®, oncology...
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Episode 335: Ultrasound-Guided IV Placement in the Oncology Setting
The ONS Podcast
Episode 335: Ultrasound-Guided IV Placement in the Oncology Setting “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 thinking. In fact, now it’s like driving a car without a seatbelt,” MiKaela Olsen, DNP, APRN-CNS, AOCNS®, FAAN,...
info_outline“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 program development specialist at Teen Cancer America in Los Angeles, CA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about advocacy for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer and his own cancer journey.
Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0
Earn 0.75 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by June 21, 2026. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Learning outcome: Learners will report an increase in knowledge related to the experience of AYA patients with cancer.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- Oncology Nursing Podcast episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- AYA Cancer Survivorship: Younger Survivors Face Different Challenges and Prefer More Casual Support Programs
- Nursing Considerations for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Care
- Have Meaningful Conversations With Pediatric, Adolescent, and Young Adult Patients and Their Families
- AYA Champions Clinic Fills Gaps in Care and Addresses Unmet Needs
- ONS book: Oncology Nurse Navigation: Delivering Patient-Centered Care Across the Continuum (second edition)
- ONS course: Advocacy 101: Making a Difference
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
- Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors: Development of an Interprofessional Survivorship Clinic
- Two Case Reports on Financial Toxicity and Healthcare Transitions in Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors
- Sexual Health: A Nursing Approach to Supporting the Needs of Young Adult Cancer Survivors
- Oncology Nursing Forum articles:
- ONS Huddle Cards:
- ONS Learning Libraries:
- Teen Cancer America
- Stupid Cancer
- Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Congress
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
- Supportive Care in Cancer article: An Actionable Needs Assessment for Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer: The AYA Needs Assessment and Service Bridge (NA-SB)
- To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.
To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.
To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [email protected].
Highlights From This Episode
“I joke a lot of the times that cancer was actually one of the best years of my life, and that’s not because it was good necessarily. It’s because that next year, after cancer, was probably the worst year of my life, and that drop-off into that early survivorship was a really brutal experience for me, and from talking to other cancer survivors, for them as well.” TS 3:25
“I talk to a lot of clinicians and a lot of young adult cancer survivors, and the more that I hear other people’s stories, the more clear it is to me that you never know who a patient is going to disclose information to. A lot of those symptoms or side effects or secondary issues that come about from cancer, which complicate every part of your life, it may not come to the [physician]. I was most comfortable with my nurses because I spent time with them.” TS 9:15
“You put your nose to the grindstone, and there’s a good guy, which is you, and a bad guy, which is cancer, and you just get through it. It’s very clear. And you have so much attention and dedicated support. And then when treatment’s over, everybody pats your back, dusts their shoulders, and says, ‘Congrats, go get out there.’ And all that structure goes away, and you are left floundering, trying to reconnect to what you were before and what life looked like. And it’s not always the same. … Most AYA patients would say treatment was the easy part. And those first two years after treatment were the hardest part of cancer—that reintegrating into life, that trying to contend with what just happened when you’re no longer in survival mode.” TS 26:14
“An AYA patient may have another 50 years of life after that. How does survivorship work for that? What is sexual health? Fertility? What is palliative care? … What does end-of-life care look for a patient who hasn’t gotten a chance to live their whole life? It’s really important stuff, and that is too much to ask any one person to figure out. And so Teen Cancer America wants to provide some of that framework.” TS 31:03
“Allowing nurses to say that, ‘There is going to be stuff that I don’t know, and that isn’t a failing on my part. Saying I don’t know something helps my patient have more confidence in me.’ I hear all the time clinicians are like, ‘I don’t bring up sexual health because I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want them to lose confidence in me.’ They don’t. They don’t lose confidence in you because you don’t know something. You’re a human, also. They lose confidence in you when you stop caring about them.” TS 43:44