Episode 361: ONS 50th Anniversary: The Value of ONS Membership in Advancing the Oncology Nursing Profession
Release Date: 05/02/2025
Episode 367: Pharmacology 101: PARP Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
Episode 367: Pharmacology 101: PARP Inhibitors “We know that in cells that are proliferating very quickly, including cancer cells, single-strand DNA breaks are very common. When that happens, these breaks are often repaired by the PARP enzyme, and the cells can continue their replication process. If we block PARP, that repair cannot happen. So in blocking that, these single-strand breaks then lead to double-strand breaks, which ultimately is leading to cell apoptosis,” Danielle Roman, PharmD, BCOP, manager of clinical pharmacy services at the Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute in...
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Episode 366: ONS 50th Anniversary: Generations of Nurses Keep Oncology in the Family
The ONS Podcast
“[My mom] would always be very inspirational whenever I would see her studying so long. And when she finally got to be a nurse, I always admired her vocation and compassion with her patients. She would always go above and beyond for all of her patients. I also got inspired a lot by my brother, as well, just seeing how passionate he was for caring for his patients for the families as well, and helping them deal with the any grief or loss that they were experiencing, Carolina Rios, MSN, RN, CPhT, told Valerie Burger, RN, MA, MS, OCN®, CPN, member of the ONS 50th anniversary planning...
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Episode 365: Radiation-Associated Secondary Cancers
The ONS Podcast
“From a radiation standpoint, the biggest thing we’re looking at is the treatment site, the dosage, and the way the radiation has been delivered. There are different ways that we can focus radiation using methods such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy, volumetric modulated arc therapy, flattening radiation beams, and proton beam therapy to try to help minimize radiation exposure to healthy tissues to minimize patient risk for secondary cancers,” ONS member Andrea Matsumoto, DNP, AGACNP-BC, AOCNP®, radiation oncology nurse practitioner at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, MI, told Jaime...
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Episode 364: How to Prepare for a Nursing Examination
The ONS Podcast
“Everyone will probably say this, but it is so true. Do not cram the night before the exam. The most important thing the night before the exam is to get a good night’s sleep. You might be so nervous. You’re like, ‘I can get any new information that matters right before the exam,’ but you can’t. Any information that you know you will have gotten in the time that you spent studying already. Really, you have to trust yourself,” Talia Lapidus, BSN, RN, professional staff nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at UPMC in Pittsburgh, PA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS,...
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Episode 363: Lung Cancer Treatment Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“A lot of other disease sites, they have some targeted therapies, they have some immunotherapies [IO]. In lung cancer, we have it all. We have chemo. We have IO. We have targeted therapies. We have bispecific T-cell engagers. We have orals, IVs. I think it’s just so important now that, particularly for lung cancer, you have to be well versed on all of these,” ONS member Beth Sandy, MSN, CRNP, thoracic medical oncology nurse practitioner at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology...
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Episode 362: Pharmacology 101: MET Inhibitors
The ONS Podcast
“The signaling and that binding of the MET and the HGF help, in a downstream way, lead to cell proliferation, cell motility, survival, angiogenesis, and also invasion—so all of those key cancer hallmarks. And because of it being on an epithelial cell, it’s a really good marker because it’s found in many, many different types of cancers, so it makes it what we call kind of a nice actionable mutation,” ONS member Marianne Davies, DNP, ACNP, AOCNP®, FAAN, senior oncology nurse practitioner at Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center in New Haven, CT, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS,...
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Episode 361: ONS 50th Anniversary: The Value of ONS Membership in Advancing the Oncology Nursing Profession
The ONS Podcast
“We spent time today discussing all the ways that owners can have a positive impact on career growth, whether you’re a bedside nurse or just in teaching, research, hospital leadership. More than career growth, I see ONS as kind of a barrier to burnout and a catalyst for professional self-care. I think that no matter what aspect of oncology care you’re involved in, it is a difficult and complex specialty. And I think with that can come a lot of challenges and tough days, and ONS brings a sense of community to that and, specifically, a community that is pushing cancer care forward,”...
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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,...
info_outline“We spent time today discussing all the ways that owners can have a positive impact on career growth, whether you’re a bedside nurse or just in teaching, research, hospital leadership. More than career growth, I see ONS as kind of a barrier to burnout and a catalyst for professional self-care. I think that no matter what aspect of oncology care you’re involved in, it is a difficult and complex specialty. And I think with that can come a lot of challenges and tough days, and ONS brings a sense of community to that and, specifically, a community that is pushing cancer care forward,” ONS member Amy Kaiser, MSN, CPNP-PC, told Nick Escobedo, DNP, RN, OCN®, NE-BC, member of the ONS 50th anniversary committee, during a conversation about the benefits of ONS membership. Escobedo spoke with Kaiser, who joined ONS as a student, and Susan Groenwald, PhD, RN, ANEF, FAAN, a charter ONS member, about how ONS membership and resources have helped them grow in their careers.
Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0
Episode Notes
- This episode is not eligible for NCPD.
- ONS Podcast™ episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- ONS book: Cancer Basics (third edition)
- ONS course: ONS Cancer Basics™
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing article: Professional Organization Membership: The Benefits of Increasing Nursing Participation
- ONS membership
- ONS chapters
- ONS Communities
- 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
Groenwald: “ONS was groundbreaking in so many areas. The area that sticks out to me was, I was the board liaison to the standards committee. And so, the development of oncology nursing standards, it was a hallmark and critical to the field and to me and my practice, as well as education. It was very exciting time.” TS 4:18
Kaiser: “I think that my very first introduction to cancer care came from the Cancer Basics course. I think I feel fortunate that I probably was the recipient of a lot of the efforts of Susan, who has pioneered so many of these different oncology resources. I had the benefit of being at school during a time where there were a ton of resources available through ONS.” TS 5:38
Groenwald: “Having attended the meetings and getting involved in some of the committees is where I met people and worked with people. And that became, for me, very vital for doing a book, where it was a contributed book, an edited book [Cancer Nursing: Principles and Practice], so we had lots of different chapters and contributors, but I met them all through ONS. And how we communicated was via the old-fashioned mail and telephone. I didn’t even have a computer. We typed the whole manuscript, thousands and thousands of pages, the first couple editions.” TS 12:25
Kaiser: “What’s so wonderful about going to [Congress] is everybody there is looking to move oncology nursing forward and meet people and connect and network. And it's this, you know, magical space of people who are meeting and sharing shared experiences, and I got to feel all of that prior to even being an oncology nurse. And I went home from that first conference, immediately discussed with my manager that I wanted to move to the oncology floor, and I did. But it was meeting all of those people and hearing about those career paths that did that for me.” TS 16:42
Kaiser: “I think people who are involved with ONS, I found, are also very, very willing to mentor. I was very fortunate as I was speaking to these people, not even being an oncology nurse, that they were so welcoming and wanted to welcome me into the specialty and wanted to show me how to get involved. So I think it's just taking that very first step of talking to somebody or going to that local chapter meeting, and then the rest of it becomes a lot easier.” TS 19:29
Groenwald: “One thing Amy mentioned that I think is important is that new nurses have so many opportunities. I think it’s scary to put forth an abstract to speak at the conference. It’s scary, but it's such a great opportunity for anybody at any level in their career. If they have something of interest to share, it’s such a great place. I feel like it launched my career in terms of being able to speak in front of people and think critically about things and put together some projects. This all came from my work with ONS.” TS 20:51