Episode 394: Prostate Cancer Survivorship Considerations for Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“The thought of recurrence is also a psychosocial issue for our patients. They’re being monitored very closely for five years, so there’s always that thought in the back of their head, ‘What if the cancer comes back? What are the next steps? What am I going to do next?’ It’s really important that we have conversations with patients and their families about where they’re at, what we’re looking for, and reassure them that we’ll be with them during this journey and help them through whatever next steps happen,” ONS member Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, manager...
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Episode 393: Antibody–Drug Conjugates in Metastatic Breast Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“I’ll go back to the backpack analogy. When your kids come home with a backpack, all of a sudden their homework is not on the desk where it’s supposed to be. It’s in the kitchen; it kind of spreads all over the place, but it’s still in the house. When we give antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), the chemotherapy does go in, but then it can kind of permeate out of the cell membrane and something right next to it—another cancer cell that might not look exactly like the cancer cell that the chemotherapy was delivered into—is affected and the chemotherapy goes over to that cancer cell...
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Episode 392: ONS 50th Anniversary: Stories From the Other Side of Cancer
The ONS Podcast
“Working as an oncology infusion nurse, being oncology certified, attending chapter meetings, going to ONS Congress® has really taught me plenty. But being an oncology patient taught me way more. I know firsthand the fears ‘you have cancer’ brings. Then going through further testing, CT scans, MRIs, genetics, the whole preparation for surgery was something I never considered when I treated a breast cancer patient,” ONS member Catherine Parsons, RN, OCN®, told Valerie Burger, MA, MS, RN, OCN®, CPN, member of the ONS 50th anniversary planning committee, during a conversation about...
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Episode 391: Pharmacology 101: Antibody–Drug Conjugates
The ONS Podcast
“Antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) have three basic parts: the antibody part, the cytotoxic chemo, and the linker that connects the two. First, the antibody part binds to the target on the surface of the cell. Antibodies can be designed to bind to proteins with a very high level of specificity. That’s what gives it the targeted portion. Then the whole thing gets taken up by the cell and broken down, which releases the chemotherapy part. Some sources will call this the ‘payload’ or the ‘warhead.’ That’s the part that’s attached to the ‘heat-seeking’ part, and that’s...
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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...
info_outlineEpisode 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 Pittsburgh, PA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the PARP inhibitor drug class.
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 June 13, 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 use of PARP inhibitors in cancer care.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- ONS Podcast™ episodes:
- Pharmacology 101 series
- Episode 330: Stay Up to Date on Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs
- Episode 232: Managing Fatigue During PARP Inhibitor Maintenance Therapy
- Episode 227: Biomarker Testing, PARP Inhibitors, and Oral Adherence During Ovarian Cancer Maintenance Therapy
- ONS Voice articles:
- PARP Inhibitors and Ovarian Cancer
- Genomics May Trick PARP Inhibitors to Treat More Cancers
- Oncology Drug Reference Sheet: Niraparib
- ONS books:
- Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy Guidelines and Recommendations for Practice (second edition)
- Clinical Guide to Antineoplastic Therapy: A Chemotherapy Handbook (fourth edition)
- Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs (fourth edition)
- ONS courses: Safe Handling Basics
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
- PARP Inhibition: Genomics-Informed Care for Patients With Malignancies Driven by BRCA1/BRCA2 Pathogenic Variants
- Talazoparib Plus Enzalutamide in Patients With HRR-Deficient mCRPC: Practical Implementation Steps for Oncology Nurses and Advanced Practice Providers
- Oncology Nursing Forum article: Familiarity and Perceptions of Ovarian Cancer Biomarker Testing and Targeted Therapy: A Survey of Oncology Nurses in the United States
- Oral Anticancer Medication Care Compass: Resources for Interprofessional Navigation
- ONS Biomarker Database
- ONS Oral Anticancer Medication Learning Library
- ONS Oral Anticancer Medication Toolkit
- Oral Chemotherapy Education Sheets
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
“The big toxicities here to watch for are primarily hematologic toxicities. It is one of those targeted therapies that does affect blood cell counts. So I’d say the blood cell count that is most commonly affected here is the hemoglobin. So, anemia very frequent complication that we see, probably a little bit more with olaparib compared with other drugs, but we see it as a class side effect. And we can also see neutropenia and thrombocytopenia with these agents, probably a little bit more with niraparib versus the others, but again, you can see it across all of these drugs.” TS 8:16
“We mentioned that rare risk of MDS and AML. This isn’t a particularly scary thing if you talk to patients about it. Because of the rarity that we see this, it isn’t something that we need to overemphasize, but I think careful monitoring of blood counts in is stressing the importance of that and early intervention here is very important.” TS 16:55
“This is a collaborative effort. And because of the home administration here, these patients do need to be followed very closely. So we are not laying eyes on them usually with the frequency that we do when we have patients actually coming into our infusion centers for treatments—so making sure that there is a plan for regular follow-up with these patients to ensure that they’re getting that lab work done, that that’s being looked at closely, that we’re adjusting the dose if we need to based on that lab work, that we are managing the patient’s fatigue. Again, that potentially dose reductions may be needed if patients are having that extreme fatigue.” TS 19:34
“I think one of those [misconceptions] could be that they’re only effective in patients that have that BRCA1/2 mutation. And again, remember here that there is some data in particular disease states that we can use them and that they work in the absence of those mutations.” TS 25:12