Episode 328: Supportive Roles in Oncology Units Improve Staffing and Patient Care
Release Date: 09/06/2024
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“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