Episode 328: Supportive Roles in Oncology Units Improve Staffing and Patient Care
Release Date: 09/06/2024
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“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 Steele Anderson, CST II, NA II, research assistant at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, NC, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about how supportive personnel are improving staffing and patient care in oncology units.
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 September 6, 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 the role of supportive staff in the care of people with cancer.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- Oncology Nursing Podcast™ episode: Episode 160: Build Innovative Staff Education Tools and Resources
- ONS Voice article: Upskilled Medical Assistants Can Improve Quality and Efficiency of Cancer Care
- ONS book: Oncology Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice
- ONS Learning Library: Staffing
- 2023 ONS Congress poster presentation: Building a Staffing Plan for the Future
- Anderson’s ONS Congress® poster presentation: The Development of an Assistive Personnel Role to Support Quality Initiative Compliance and Improve Patient Outcomes on an Inpatient Hematology/Oncology Unit
- National Guidelines for Nursing Delegation
To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.
To find resources for creating an Oncology Nursing 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 worked on a 53-bed oncology unit that had limited staff and resources to complete audits on things like central lines, Foleys, tubings, turn compliance, falls—different things like that. Our nurses were dealing with high patient acuity and task overload, so one of our amazing CN4s came up with this awesome rule as a cost-effective way to perform and sustain quality improvements on our unit.” TS 3:15
“Even before this role, I never thought about being on a committee. I never even knew that assistive personnel could even be on committees. I thought committees were tailored more toward nursing. But being in this committee, I feel like involving assistive personnel in committees, can number one, empower them and boost their morale, which in turn, can have higher job satisfaction, good retention.” TS 11:42
“Encouraging assistive personnel and participating in continuing education programs that may be offered to learn more about oncology-specific care, teaching clinical skills that may be within the scope of practice. With this position, I am able to do a lot of tasks that are beneficial to both our nurses and assistive personnel.” TS 16:08
“Opportunities to shadow with nurses during procedures can kind of give us that hands-on learning experience to know more about specific things that are going on and what to monitor with patients. And then also it just will help build connections within our healthcare team and your workplace and your unit.” TS 16:59