Episode 345: Breast Cancer Screening, Detection, and Disparities
Release Date: 01/10/2025
Episode 360: An Overview of Brain Malignancies for Oncology Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“Everyone’s brain is extremely heterogenic, so it’s different. You can put five of us in a room; we can all have the same diagnosis of a [glioblastoma multiforme], but all of ours can be different. They’re highly aggressive biologically. It’s a small area in a hard shell. So trying to get through the blood–brain barrier is different. There’s a lot of areas of hypoxia in the brain. There’s a lot of pressure there. The microbiology is very different—it’s a cold environment versus a hot environment—and then the pathways are just different,” Lori Cappello, MSN, APN-C,...
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Episode 359: Lung Cancer Screening, Early Detection, and Disparities
The ONS Podcast
Episode 359: Lung Cancer Screening, Early Detection, and Disparities “I was actually speaking to a primary care audience back a few weeks ago, and we were talking about lung cancer screening. And they said, ‘Our patients, they don’t want to do it.’ And I said, ‘Do you remind them that lung cancer is curable?’ Because everybody thinks it is a death sentence. But when you’re talking about screening a patient, I think it’s really important to say, ‘Listen, if we find this early, stage I or stage II, our chances of curing this and it never coming back again is upwards of 60%...
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Episode 358: Pharmacology 101: KRAS Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
“It’s been known for quite a while that [KRAS] is a mutation that leads to cancer development, but for really over four decades, researchers couldn’t figure out a way to target it. And so, it was often considered something that was undruggable. But all of this changed recently. So about four years ago, in 2021, we had the approval of the first KRAS inhibitor. So it’s specifically a KRAS G12C inhibitor known as sotorasib,” Danielle Roman, PharmD, BCOP, manager of clinical pharmacy services at the Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute in Pittsburgh, PA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN,...
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Episode 357: ONS 50th Anniversary: The Evolution of Cancer Treatment: Stories From the Front Lines
The ONS Podcast
“There have been many changes since the ’70s that have shaped the nurse’s role in administering chemo, and in supporting patients. The major change early on was the transition from that of nurses mixing chemo to that of pharmacists. Regulatory agencies like NIOSH and OSHA defined chemotherapy as hazardous drugs, and professional organizations became involved, leading to the publication of the joint ASCO and ONS Standards of Safe Handling,” ONS member Scarlott Mueller, MPH, RN, FAAN, secretary of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Board and member of the Oncology Nursing...
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Episode 356: A Nurse’s Guide to the 2024 NIOSH List of Hazardous Drugs
The ONS Podcast
“And so you have different kinds of hazards with the drugs that you’re using. That means that in the past, when a lot of oncology drugs, antineoplastic drugs used to treat cancer would have been added, you may see that a lot of oncology drugs either weren’t added or they’re added in a different place on the list than they were in the past. That’s due to some of the restructuring of the list we’ll probably talk about later,” Jerald L. Ovesen, PhD, pharmacologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,...
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Episode 355: Pharmacology 101: Hedgehog Pathway Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
“I genuinely think nurses and pharmacists need to know why these medicines are called hedgehog inhibitors so that we can, in fact, effectively educate our patients. Just because to date, this class has the weirdest name I’ve encountered, and I almost expect at this point that my patients are going to ask me about it. I think that we need to be informed that, just on, where do these names come from, why is it called this, and does it matter to my patient?” Andrew Ruplin, PharmD, clinical oncology pharmacist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, WA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN,...
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Episode 354: Breast Cancer Survivorship Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“You can give someone a survivorship care plan, but just giving them doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. Maybe there’s no information about family history. Or maybe there’s information and there’s quite a bit of family history, but there’s nothing that says, ‘Oh, they were ever had genetic testing,’ or ‘Oh, they were ever referred.’ So the intent is so good because it’s to really take that time out when they’re through with active treatment and, you know, try to help give the patient some guidance as to what to expect down the line,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN,...
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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...
info_outline“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 conversation about breast cancer screening.
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 January 10, 2027. 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 breast cancer screening, detection, and disparities.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- ONS Podcast™ episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- An Oncology Nurse’s Guide to Cascade Testing
- Breast Cancer Prevention, Screening, Diagnosis, Treatment, Side Effect, and Survivorship Considerations
- Encourage Breast Cancer Screening in Childhood Cancer Survivors
- Genetic Disorder Reference Sheet: BRCA1 and BRCA2 Hereditary Cancers
- Genetic Disorder Reference Sheet: PALB2
- ONS books:
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing article: Germline Cancer Genetic Counseling: Clinical Care for Transgender and Nonbinary Individuals
- ONS courses:
- ONS Learning Library: Genomics and Precision Oncology
- American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Facts and Figures
- Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Calculator
- Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool
- National Comprehensive Cancer Network
- Tyrer-Cuzick Risk Assessment Calculator
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
“Unfortunately, probably about 42,500 women die every year from breast cancer, and that number still seems really high because mammography screening has really enabled us to detect breast cancer in many, many cases when it would be most treatable. And so that’s a place where you would like to see some real progress.” TS 3:32
“Primary prevention for all individuals, which is always best to prevent, would include 150 minutes of intentional exercise, watching the diet, keeping that weight as low as possible—we want more muscle and less fat mass—and limiting alcohol intake. Then we go and we talk about screening.” TS 7:29
“The most recent statistic, and this kind of is post-COVID, is that 67% of women age 40 and over have had breast cancer screening in the last two years, which means that there’s a hunk of women, 33% of women who have not had breast cancer screening in the last two years and that who are 40 and over. And that to me is a really, really sad statistic because that’s a missed opportunity for screening.” TS 11:32
“Sometimes we forget that women and individuals who’ve had breast cancer, especially if they had it at a younger age, their risk of a second breast cancer over time is about 1% or 2% per year. So, if you have a first breast cancer at 40, and you live another 30 years, two times 30 is 60, that risk is substantial. A lot of times we don’t see as much anymore, which is good. Individuals who had a lot of radiation to the chest, we used to see a lot of young individuals having radiation therapy for Hodgkin’s disease that encompassed the chest, and a lot of them were diagnosed with breast cancer afterwards.” TS 15:31
“One of the things that always makes me really sad is that probably less than 40% of people who are eligible for this cascade testing, and mind you, many of the laboratories, if we test a parent and say they have a pathogenic variant, they will offer free testing to relatives for 90–120 days in that lab. They don’t even have to pay for the genetic test. They just have to get the counseling and send it. But less than 40% of individuals who would benefit from cascade testing ever get it done.” TS 35:02
“I have had this privilege of sitting for decades watching genetics. That’s the only area I’ve ever worked in that is always completely changing. And just when you think you got it, there is something new and it’s really driving our oncology care. And I would really encourage people, I know we’ve said it about 10 times now, to look at that Genomics and Precision Medicine Learning Library, there are resources in there if you want to spend 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes—if you got a whole hour or two, there’s courses. There are so many things in there, and if you really want to become more savvy, you can, and that’s a great place to start.” TS 45:34