Episode 349: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Safe Handling and ONS’s Legacy in Developing Safe Handling Guidelines
Release Date: 02/07/2025
Episode 390: Prostate Cancer Treatment Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“Any time the patient hears the word ‘cancer,’ they shut down a little bit, right? They may not hear everything that the oncologist or urologist, or whoever is talking to them about their treatment options, is saying. The oncology nurse is a great person to sit down with the patient and go over the information with them at a level they can understand a little bit more. To go over all the treatment options presented by the physician, and again, make sure that we understand their goals of care,” ONS member Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, manager of clinical education and...
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Episode 389: Biomarker Testing for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“It’s critical to identify those mutations found that are driving the cancer’s growth and guide the personalized treatment based on those results. And important to remember, too, early testing is crucial for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In studies, it has been found to be associated with improved survival outcomes and reduced mortality,” ONS member Vicki Doctor, MS, BSN, BSW, RN, OCN®, precision medicine director at the City of Hope Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, and Phoenix, AZ, locations, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing...
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Episode 388: ONS 50th Anniversary: Milestones in Oncology Advocacy and Health Policy
The ONS Podcast
“I think we really need to push more of our oncology nurses to get into elected and appointed positions. So often we’re looking at health positions to get involved in, and those are wonderful. We need nurses as secretaries of health, but there are others. We as nurses understand higher education. We understand environment. We understand energy. So I think we look broadly at, what are positions we can get in? Let’s have more nurses run for state legislative offices, for our House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate,” ONS member Barbara Damron, PhD, LHD, RN, FAAN, told Ryne Wilson,...
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Episode 387: Prostate Cancer Screening, Early Detection, and Disparities
The ONS Podcast
“[When] a lot of men think about prostate exams, they immediately think of the glove going on the hand of the physician, and they immediately clench. But really try to talk with them and discuss with them what some of the benefits are of understanding early detection. Even just having those conversations with their providers so that they understand what the risk and benefits are of having screening. And then educate patients on what a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and digital rectal exam (DRE) actually are—how it happens, what it shows, and what the necessary benefits of those are,”...
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Episode 386: Interprofessional Navigation and the Oral Anticancer Medication Care Compass
The ONS Podcast
“This was a panel of subject matter experts of various nurses and pharmacists. We often found common ground but also discovered new ideas, different touchpoints, and key junctures along that oral anticancer medication journey. For example, the pharmacists were able to share their insights into their unique workflows within their practice setting. What resulted is a resource that truly reflects that collaborative effort between the disciplines,” ONS member Mary Anderson, BSN, RN, OCN®, senior manager of nursing membership and professional development at the Network for Collaborative...
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Episode 385: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Cancer Survivorship
The ONS Podcast
“It started out by doing a kind of a white paper that we called Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care. Ellen Stovall, our CEO [of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship] at the time, gave this report to Dr. Richard Klausner, who was the head of National Cancer Institute at the time. He called Ellen immediately and said, ‘Why are we not doing something about this?’ Within one year, we had the Office of Cancer Survivorship at NCI,” ONS member Susan Leigh, BSN, RN, told ONS member Ruth Van Gerpen, MS, RN-BC, APRN-CNS, AOCNS®, PMGT-BC, member of the ONS 50th anniversary...
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Episode 384: Learn About Scalp Cooling for Chemotherapy-Induced Alopecia
The ONS Podcast
“Chemotherapy-induced alopecia does cause a lot of stress. It’s associated with lower quality of life. Scalp cooling may really help improve quality of life. Some studies have shown that women in the scalp cooling group felt less upset about losing their hair and less dissatisfied with their appearance compared to the women in the control group that didn’t receive any scalp cooling. So a lot of these studies are showing it does have a very positive impact on psychosocial feelings and side effects in relation to overall cancer treatment,” ONS member Jaclyn Andronico, MSN, CNS, OCN®,...
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Episode 383: Pharmacology 101: Bispecific Antibodies
The ONS Podcast
“I think that this is an area that is exploding. Working with drug development, I see new agents all the time, with unique targets I’ve never heard about, with targets I have heard about used in a different way. So, I really think we’re going to see more and more bispecifics. A lot of these drugs are used second line, third line, fourth line. I would not be surprised if they moved up in treatment, especially as we learn safer ways to give these drugs,” ONS member Moe Schwartz, PharmD, BCOP, FHOP, professor of pharmacy practice at the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy at the...
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Episode 382: Radiation Oncology Treatment Care for Pediatric Patients
The ONS Podcast
“I think sometimes people don’t expect pediatric patients to handle radiation as well as they do. They may have a family member who also had radiation for breast cancer or for prostate cancer and they were an older adult and had really severe side effects. And then they say, ‘Oh, no, I’ve got to put my little baby through this. I don’t really want to do this.’ We say kids are very different in how they handle this. They’re very resilient, so we can provide good education about that,” Elizabeth Cummings, MSN, CPNP-AC, CPHON®, radiation oncology nurse practitioner at...
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Episode 381: ONS 50th Anniversary: The Evolution of Oncology Nursing Roles
The ONS Podcast
“As ONS continues to look ahead, its commitment to shaping the future of oncology nursing remains unwavering. ONS is proactively developing the tools, capabilities, and strategies needed to support oncology nurses in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. ONS will continue to set the standard, ensuring that oncology nurses are equipped with clinical expertise, collaborative skills, technology proficiency, and mentorship necessary to thrive,” ONS member Diane Barber, PhD, APRN, ANP-BC, AOCNP®, FAANP, FAAN, member of the ONS 50th anniversary committee, said regarding the continuously...
info_outline“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 committee member, during a conversation about the evolution of safe handling of hazardous drugs and ONS’s role in shaping safe handling policies.
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 February 7, 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 evolution of safe handling guidelines.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- ONS Podcast™ episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- ONS books:
- Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy Guidelines and Recommendations for Practice (second edition)
- Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs (fourth edition)
- ONS courses:
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
- Huddle Card: Introduction to Safe Handling
- ONS Safe Handling Learning Library
- Joint ONS and Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA) position statement: Ensuring Healthcare Worker Safety When Handling Hazardous Drugs
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: Managing Hazardous Drug Exposures: Information for Healthcare Settings
- American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Guidelines on Handling Hazardous Drugs
- USP <800> FAQs
- Connie Henke Yarbro Oncology Nursing History Center
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 pubONSVoice@ons.org.
Highlights From This Episode
“PPE has always been recommended to reduce exposure because gloves and gowns provide physical barrier to protect against dermal absorption. But what we didn’t know back then was what gloves and gowns were made of mattered. So PVC gloves were often used just because they were readily available in all our clinical settings. Gowns were rarely worn for drug administration, even though they had been recommended since early on, and many considered gowns back then as optional because the wording in the [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] guidelines said ‘recommended’ and not ‘required.’” TS 3:19
“Those early chemo gloves were a bit like wearing gloves you might use to clean your oven. They were so thick and got in the way of taking care of patients or mixing drugs or administering drugs. So the biggest change, I think, is that gloves that are currently available are very thin, and they provide the necessary protection for those who are handling hazardous drugs. We now have a gloves standard that requires permeation studies to demonstrate the protective ability of the gloves before they can be labeled for use with hazardous drugs.” TS 11:56
“ONS and HOPA developed a position statement on safe handling of hazardous drugs. … This came because our two organizations were unable to support some of the other proposed guidelines from another organization. So we got together, and through our cooperation, resulted in language about the importance of safe handling, about supporting safe handling for practitioners, pharmacists, and nurses. Also, I feel really good about this—our cooperation resulted in language about protecting the rights of staff who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant or who are breastfeeding to engage in alternative duty that doesn’t require them to handle hazardous drugs.” TS 17:12
“If there’s no worker safety, then who’s going to take care of the patients?” TS 21:52
“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, and that’s going back a long way, there were a lot of nurses who were skeptical about the need for self-protection. They had been handling hazardous drugs for years and had no signs of ill effects, and so they assumed that we weren't overreacting with all of the recommendations. They saw the use of precautions and PPE as a speed bump in their busy day and also thought that was unnecessary. I rarely see that now. Nurses are concerned for their own safety and more open to protective behaviors.” TS 23:50