Episode 325: What Changed in the 2024 ASCO/ONS Antineoplastic Administration Safety Standards
Release Date: 08/16/2024
Episode 353: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Oncology Nursing Certification
The ONS Podcast
“The response was, in my opinion, sort of overwhelmingly positive. I think all of us old-timers who were at ONS Congress® in 1986 remember those 1,600 nurses waiting in line to enter the ballroom to take that inaugural exam. It takes a while to check in 1,600 people. They kind of all filled up the lobby outside of the ballroom, and then they spilled over down into the escalator, and the escalators had to be turned off,” Cyndi Miller-Murphy, MSN, FAAN, CAE, first executive director of the Oncology Nursing Certification Corporation (ONCC), told Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, ONS...
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Episode 352: Pharmacology 101: Epigenetics
The ONS Podcast
“Now, what we found is that epigenetics is actually heritable and it’s actually reversible. And we can now manipulate these principles with pharmacotherapy drugs,” Eric Zack, RN, OCN®, BMTCN®, clinical assistant professor at Loyola College Chicago Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing in Chicago, IL, and RN3 at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the epigenetics drug class. Music Credit: “” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by...
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Episode 351: What It’s Like to Develop Symptom Intervention Resources
The ONS Podcast
“It is very much a collaborative group process. There are group meetings where we come to consensus on our different ratings. There’s so much support from ONS staff, even amongst our different groups, even when you’re assigned to one peer reviewer. Let’s say you go on vacation, sometimes we’re paired with other people, too. So there is some flexibility in the opportunity as well,” Holly Tenaglia, DNP, APRN, AGCNS-BC, OCN®, lecturer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a...
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Episode 350: Breast Cancer Treatment Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“This is what totally drives the treatment decisions, and that’s why having that pathology report when the nurse is educating the patient is so important, because you can say, well, you have this kind of breast cancer, and this kind of breast cancer is generally treated this way,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in Missouri, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about what oncology nurses need to know about breast cancer treatment. Music Credit:...
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Episode 349: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Safe Handling and ONS’s Legacy in Developing Safe Handling Guidelines
The ONS Podcast
“What I find most rewarding is connecting with nurses, who now understand the risks of exposure and are committed to minimizing their personal exposure. When I first started speaking about safe handling, there were a lot of nurses who were skeptical about the need for self-protection. I rarely see that now. Nurses are concerned for their own safety and more open to protective behaviors,” ONS member Martha Polovich, PhD, RN, AOCN®-Emeritus, adjunct professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, told Liz Rodriguez, DNP, RN, OCN®, CENP, ONS member and 50th anniversary...
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Episode 348: Breast Cancer Diagnostic Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“We know that some women are going to get called back. And it’s just because usually they can’t see something clearly enough. And so in most cases, those women are going to get cleared with one or two images, and they’re going to say, ‘Oh, we compressed that better, we checked it with an ultrasound, we’re fine.’ That woman can go ahead and go. But we don’t want to miss those early breast cancers,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in Missouri, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing...
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Episode 347: Care Considerations for Radiopharmaceuticals and Theranostics in Patients With Cancer
The ONS Podcast
"If you take your normal radiation oncology experience, as we know in radiation oncology, radiations are done by the machines, you know, externally. Nurses deal with the side effects and everything like that, whereas radiopharmaceuticals are given kind of on the internal basis, they’re systemic,” ONS member John Hollman, BSN, RN, OCN®, radiation nurse educator for Texas Oncology, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about caring for patients receiving radiopharmaceuticals and theranostics. Music Credit:...
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Episode 346: Pharmacology 101: BTK Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
"In B cell malignancies, BTKi inhibits that BTK enzyme which is very upstream. It tells NF-κB to stop signaling into the nucleus and then inhibits proliferation and survival of B cells," Puja Patel, PharmD, BCOP, clinical oncology pharmacist at Northwestern Medicine Cancer Center at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, IL, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about BTK inhibitors. Music Credit: “” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 Earn 1.0 contact hours of...
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Episode 345: Breast Cancer Screening, Detection, and Disparities
The ONS Podcast
“The statistic you always kind of want to keep in the back of your brain is that over a lifetime, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. So that means for an individual assigned female at birth, there’s a 13% chance that if that individual lives to age 85, that they will be diagnosed with breast cancer. So, it’s the most common cancer diagnosed in this group,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a...
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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...
info_outline“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 of oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health System told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the new Antineoplastic Therapy Administration Safety Standards for Adult and Pediatric Oncology from ASCO and ONS.
Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0
Earn 0.5 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by August 16, 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 nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Learning outcome: Learners will report an increase in knowledge related to increasing safety of antineoplastic medication administration.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- Oncology Nursing Podcast™ episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- ONS books:
- ONS courses:
- Antineoplastic Therapy Administration Safety Standards for Adult and Pediatric Oncology: ASCO-ONS Standards
- Oncology Nursing Forum article: ASCO/ONS Antineoplastic Therapy Administration Safety Standards
- ONS Learning Library: Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs
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Highlights From This Episode
“The target population for these standards are, first, our patients—adult and pediatric patients with cancer who are receiving antineoplastic therapy—but as well as those who care for patients with cancer. And we’re not distinguishing between the healthcare worker, the caregiver, all people who care for patients with cancer, including those practitioners or healthcare workers that are not in a traditional oncology setting.” TS 3:25
“The audience is, first of all, oncology clinicians. We spent a lot of time on this panel writing the definition, so it was very clear who people were as we use terminology in the standards. So, an oncology clinician, when we refer to that in the standards, that's a licensed nurse, like a nurse or pharmacist, a licensed clinician, or it could be a non-licensed clinician like a patient care assistant or tech. So, we refer to people as clinicians that are licensed or unlicensed.” TS 4:14
“We need to define all types of therapy for cancer, and chemo is one type of treatment modality. The explosion of new therapies that include cellular therapies such as CAR T and other exciting emerging treatment options are not our traditional chemotherapy. And so the term antineoplastic was agreed upon for all these therapies to treat cancer. That definition in the standards is, and I quote, ‘All antineoplastic agents used to treat cancer regardless of the route.’ And that’s important because the previous guidelines were not as inclusive about that.” TS 6:58
“Another high-level change was the new language about the location of administration to include new healthcare settings. We know that antineoplastic medications are given in a variety of settings, not just your typical inpatient or ambulatory oncology infusion center anymore. We’ve got health plans that are increasingly developing strategies to direct patients to more convenient and less costly sites of service, such as the physician’s office or home infusion, unregulated sites, and more care is being given in these settings. So, it’s really important that we adapt the standards to make sure those patients treated in the home or in a freestanding center are given the same opportunity for safety and quality.” TS 8:39
“The other thing in Domain 1 that I think is crucial for nurses to understand, because it’s a big change, and we made this change based on the literature, looking at patient safety events related to inaccurate weight and height measurements. Domain 1 has a standard 1.7 that says weight and height are measured and documented in the medical record in metric units only. And I see that a lot when I’m going around the country. People still have their scales and pounds and their height in inches, and we’ve got to change that. We shouldn’t be converting things. Both the measurement and the documentation are verified by two individuals, one of whom is a licensed clinician. Prior to preparation and administration of a newly prescribed antineoplastic treatment plan.” TS 13:32
“That third verification is an independent safety check and, in my opinion, should be done in a quiet place where you can go through and do the safety checks that are listed in the standards quietly and thoughtfully, without being in the presence of the patient or caregiver. Those are done in an attempt to do some preliminary safety checks to make sure that when I go in the room to do my safety checks—we often call those bedside safety checks—that if I have an error before that with a dose or something, I’ve caught that before I get to the patient’s side.” TS 20:52