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Episode 347: Care Considerations for Radiopharmaceuticals and Theranostics in Patients With Cancer

Release Date: 01/24/2025

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,...

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%...

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,...

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...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

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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"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: “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 January 24, 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 radiopharmaceuticals and theranostics in cancer care.

Episode Notes 

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 think most places are now doing the seven days, just to be extra cautious and you know, can't you be around any pregnant women or children, you can’t just be going to Target and stuff like that right after your injection because you are radioactive, and try not to share a bathroom with your family, that can be difficult and that leads into, as we’ve talked about in many talks that we’ve had, the social situation.” TS 8:08

“It’s really up to that nurse to recognize, like a good infusion nurse, to recognize the signs and symptoms of an infusion reaction and then to catch it at the earliest possible moment.” TS 11:42

We’re not really dependent on lab values between treatments, whereas the infusion you have to look at your lab values. These are the game changer.” TS 13:20

“You just hear the term radiation, and you just think of Chernobyl, or you think of like these worst-case, media-blown things and you think, how are you not being dosed with radiation every day? Because they don’t realize that you have this whole radiation safety team that’s required to be overseeing that you’re doing things safely and effectively, that these nurses that are administering these therapies or these therapists that are helping with the therapy are the safest as possible.” TS 18:37

“If it wasn’t safe, we wouldn’t be doing it. You know what I mean? So, there is that implicit bias that I think I can foresee a lot of people trying hard to get over. And if you do have questions, anyone who’s listening, and you’re scared that your center is going to roll this out, please talk to your physicians, please talk to your radiation oncologists, please talk to your radiation safety officers. They can definitely assure and put your fears at rest, hopefully. I 100% trust the radiation safety officers.” TS 19:45

“That’s why the nurses really need to be educated by those radiation safety teams so they can pass those questions, or they can answer those questions, alleviate those fears on consultation—or actually during the week when we’re calling in for questions.” TS 21:07

“I think getting both teams involved, if you’re going to really do this partnership, I find it really rare that it’s ever solely in rad onc. It’s always usually a combination of both. They’re always referred to us from that onc or somewhere. So, you really need that partnership.” TS 23:20

“This is so great to see what the future holds with these. And like I said, now they’re trying to do clinical studies for different diagnoses. So I think it’s just going to explode in the next few years about what we can use these for. It’s really an exciting time to be not only in oncology, but in radiation oncology.” TS 26:54

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