Episode 349: ONS 50th Anniversary: Evolution of Safe Handling and ONS’s Legacy in Developing Safe Handling Guidelines

“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:
  • Episode 330: Stay Up to Date on Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs
  • Episode 308: Hazardous Drugs and Hazardous Waste: Personal, Patient, and Environmental Safety
  • ONS 50th Anniversary series
• ONS Voice articles:
  • Hazardous Drug Surface Contamination Prevails, Despite More Diligent PPE
  • NIOSH Releases Its 2024 List of Hazardous Drugs
  • USP <800> Answers Some Difficult Questions About Hazardous Drug Safety
• ONS books:
  • Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy Guidelines and Recommendations for Practice (second edition)
  • Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs (fourth edition)
• ONS courses:
  • ONS Fundamentals of Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy Administration™
  • ONS/ONCC Chemotherapy Immunotherapy Certificate™
  • Safe Handling Basics
• Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
  • Hazardous Drug Contamination: Presence of Bathroom Contamination in an Ambulatory Cancer Center
  • Oral Chemotherapy: An Evidence-Based Practice Change for Safe Handling of Patient Waste
• 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 [email protected].

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