Episode 350: Breast Cancer Treatment Considerations for Nurses

“This is what totally drives the treatment decisions, and that’s why having that pathology report when the nurse is educating the patient is so important, because you can say, well, you have this kind of breast cancer, and this kind of breast cancer is generally treated this way,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN^®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in Missouri, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about what oncology nurses need to know about breast cancer treatment. 

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod 

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0  

Earn 1.0 contact hours (including 15 minutes of pharmacotherapeutic content) of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by February 14, 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 treatment considerations. 

Episode Notes  

• Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
• Previous ONS Podcast^™ site-specific episodes: ONS Voice articles:
  • Episode 348: Breast Cancer Diagnostic Considerations for Nurses
  • Episode 345: Breast Cancer Screening, Detection, and Disparities
• ONS Voice articles:
  • An Oncology Nurse’s Guide to Cascade Testing 
  • Breast Cancer Prevention, Screening, Diagnosis, Treatment, Side Effect, and Survivorship Considerations 
  • Learn How to Read a Germline Genomic Testing Report 
  • Learn How to Read a Somatic Biomarker Testing Report 
  • Sexual Considerations for Patients With Cancer 
• ONS books:
  • Breast Care Certification Review (second edition) 
  • Guide to Breast Care for Oncology Nurses 
• ONS courses:
  • Breast Cancer Bundle 
  • Breast Cancer: Treatment and Symptom Management 
• ONS Biomarker Database results for breast cancer
• ONS Next-Generation Sequencing Sample Report 
• ONS Learning Libraries:
  • Breast Cancer
  • Genomics and Precision Oncology  
• American Cancer Society:
  • Breast Cancer Facts and Figures 
  • Your Breast Pathology Report: Breast Cancer
• National Comprehensive Cancer Network  
• National Cancer Institute Breast Cancer—Patient Version 

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 

“Local treatment is typically going to consider some kind of surgery with or without radiation, depending on the surgery and the extent of the breast cancer. All women are going to have, and today when you use the word women, individuals assigned female at birth, they are the vast majority of individuals being treated for breast cancer, but for individuals assigned male at birth, there’s not near as much research, but generally their treatment is very similar. So that’s something to kind of keep in the back of your mind.” TS 2:39 

“This is very confusing for patients because they’re like, ‘Well, my friend at church had this and why am I getting this and why are they getting something different?’ And that is because of the pathology report. So taking that time to explain that with a pathology, I think is really important.” TS 8:31 

“When they see the breast surgeon, all individuals are going to have some kind of axillary evaluation.  Now, hopefully it’s going to be a sentinel lymph node. So they’re going to, at the time of surgery, put a tracer and, you know, they’re going to take out maybe one, two, three lymph nodes and hopefully, you know, there is not a lot of disease there. And if that’s the case, they’re kind of done with that. So the sentinel lymph node evaluation, it’s really more to stage and provide that information, but it kind of sets the stage a lot of times for the other treatments selections. And I think people need to realize that this is important. This is a very important procedure.” TS 15:31 

“Years ago, when women had a breast mass, they went to the OR and it was biopsied in a frozen section and if it was positive, they had a mastectomy. So women would wake up and they’d be feeling their chest because they’re like, ‘What happened here?’ And that is not great care. It doesn’t give that woman any autonomy, but it was the best that could be done at that point. Now, with the diagnostic where we can do a needle biopsy, they can kind of stop and take a timeout and we can kind of clinically stage that.” TS 17:04 

“For women that really desire breast-conserving therapy, they can anticipate that postoperatively at some point, they’re going to have treatment to the entire breast, we typically call whole breast radiation, and then they may have a boost. Now, in many, many probably cases, that’s going to be over five to six weeks, Monday through Friday. So the treatment itself doesn’t take but a couple of minutes, but you have to get to the facility. And even though we streamline check-in processes and whatnot, you have to get undressed, you have to get positioned on the table. So it is a commitment, and it can be disruptive.” TS 24:49 

“The hormone-blocking agents are going to be the cornerstone of all those treatments for anyone who has hormone receptor–positive breast cancer. So they are going to take these agents and as you said, they’re probably going to take them for 5–10 years. It’s quite the journey.” TS 32:33  

“I think you need to be mindful that if someone has had germline testing and they’ve tested positive, they are not only worried about themselves, and they are worried about the rest of their family. That is a big deal. And even though I’ll hear mothers say, ‘I feel so guilty, now my daughter has this,’ now, I’ve never heard a daughter come and say, ‘Gosh, I wish my mom hadn’t had me because of this.’ There’s a lot of feeling and emotion that goes on with that, and realize that those individuals are probably going to have fairly complicated management that goes over and above their breast cancer.” TS 41:50