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Episode 376: ONS 50th Anniversary: The Science Behind the History of Nursing Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

Release Date: 08/15/2025

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...

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,...

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,”...

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...

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...

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®,...

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...

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...

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...

Episode 380: Colorectal Cancer Survivorship Considerations for Nurses

The ONS Podcast

“One powerful, overlooked aspect of colorectal cancer survivorship is the emotional and identity transformation that our survivors undergo—and really how little space is given in the clinical arena for that. No one really talks about this ‘invisible recovery.’ Facing mortality can lead to prolonged changes in values, relationships, and life goals. And these experiences aren’t captured in lab results or imaging scans, but they really shape how survivors live, love, and heal and continue with their lives,” ONS member Kris Mathey, DNP, APRN-CNP, AOCNP®, gastrointestinal...

More Episodes

“At least some of the answer to these issues of compassion fatigue and burnout have to do making our practice environments the very, very best they can be so that nurses and other clinicians can really connect and care for patients in the ways that they want to be able to do that—and the patients need them to be able to do. I think there’s a lot that is here already and will be coming, and I feel pretty optimistic about it,” ONS member Anne Gross, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, senior vice president for patient care services and chief nursing officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, told ONS member Christine Ladd, MSN, RN, OCN^®, NE-BC, member of the ONS 50th anniversary committee, during a conversation about burnout and compassion fatigue in oncology nursing. Ladd spoke with Gross and ONS member Tracy Gosselin, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, AOCN^®, FAAN, senior vice president and chief nursing executive at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, about the history of nurse well-being and how nurses and health systems are approaching it today.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0

Episode Notes

ONS Voice articles:

Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:

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

Gross: “I was on an oncology unit early in practice. And just like today, we were dealing with very sick patients. We were dealing with death and dying. We were administering very toxic treatments and really pushing a field forward in oncology. So there were similar challenges, but I think different from today. There weren’t the kind of resources; there wasn’t the body of work that’s been done today around compassion fatigue and burnout, work-life balance, and things like that. There was not that body of literature and science like there is today. And so there was more of a grassroots kind of support building in the clinical environment that I think I experienced.” TS 2:35

Gosselin: “I think there’s also a piece when we think about nurses in the work we do—we also have families. We have aging parents and children. And sometimes that burnout is multifactorial in that we have family obligations and other obligations that make it really hard. And for some people, they say work is their escape from some of that. Yet it’s all hard to balance sometimes.” TS 8:09

Gosselin: “It’s this question that people like Anne, myself, other chief nurses are saying. If we add this new technology, what are we going to take away? Do we need another alarm to ring to the phone or to their badge? How much can you ask people to do and not be distracted when they’re at point of care delivering patient care? Technology should never be a distractor, nor should it tell us how to practice. The technologies we have today—I’m like, ‘Wow, I wish I had that when I started my career.’ And yet there’s also a double-edged sword to that. I think we have to balance when we think about care and care delivery.” TS 16:36

Gross: “There are so many resources, first of all, that ONS provides to all of us at all levels and in all points in our career and our path from novice to experts. And the needs, though, are the same. Whether you’re a novice nurse or whether you’re a very experienced nurse, you need to continue to learn and to get new information, and ONS is an incredible resource for that. … As I think both of us keep alluding to and emphasizing here, you also need that connection to other people. And that’s what ONS provides—that opportunity to get connected to other people that might be working in some other part of the country or other part of the world but is dealing with similar things that you’re dealing with. So it provides that opportunity, and then it also provides an opportunity to get involved. I think when you can get involved and be part of solving a problem, it doesn’t then control you and you won’t feel defeated by it.” TS 22:24

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