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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 400: Pharmacology 101: Radioimmunoconjugates

The ONS Podcast

“Radioimmunoconjugates work through a dual mechanism that combines immunologic targeting with localized radiation delivery. The monoclonal antibody components bind to specific tumor-associated antigens such as CD20, expressed on malignant B cells. Once found, the attached radioisotope delivers beta radiation directly to the tumor, causing DNA damage and cell death,” Sabrina Enoch, MSN, RN, OCN®, CNMT, NMTCB (CT), theranostics clinical specialist at Highlands Oncology in Rogers, AR, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a...

Episode 399: National Hazardous Drug Exposure Registry

The ONS Podcast

“The United States does not have a national cancer registry. We have a bunch of state registries. Some of those registries do collaborate and share information, but the issue is the registries that do exist typically do not report cancer by occupation. So, we cannot get our arms around the potential work-relatedness of the health outcome given the current way the state registries collect information. What we’re trying to set up, is a way to make what is currently an invisible risk, visible,” ONS member Melissa McDiarmid, MD, MPH, DABT, professor of medicine and epidemiology and public...

Episode 398: An Overview of Multiple Myeloma for Oncology Nurses

The ONS Podcast

“[Multiple myeloma] is very treatable, very manageable, but right now it is still considered an incurable disease. So, patients are on this journey with myeloma for the long term. It’s very important for us to realize that during their journey, we will see them repeatedly. They are going to be part of our work family. They will be with us for a while. I think it’s our job to be their advocate. To be really focused on not just the disease, but periodically assessing that financial burden and psychosocial aspect,” Ann McNeill, RN, MSN, APN, nurse practitioner at the John Theurer Cancer...

Episode 397: Cancer Symptom Management Basics: Ototoxicity

The ONS Podcast

“Referring patients to audiology early on has shown dramatic reduction in hearing loss or complications because the audiologist can really see where were they at before they started chemotherapy, where were they at during, if they get an audiogram during their treatment. And then after treatment, it’s really important for them to see an audiologist because this is really a survivorship journey for them. And as nurses, the ‘so what’: We are the first line of defense,” ONS member Jennessa Rooker, PhD, RN, OCN®, director of nursing excellence at the Tampa General Hospital Cancer...

Episode 396: Nursing Considerations From the ONS/ASCO Extravasation Guideline

The ONS Podcast

“We proposed a concept to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), recognizing that extravasation management requires significant interdisciplinary collaboration and rapid action. There can occasionally be uncertainty or lack of clear guidance when an extravasation event occurs, and our objective was to look at this evidence with the expert panel to create a resource to support oncology teams overall. We hope that the guideline can help mitigate harm and improve patient outcomes,” Caroline Clark, MSN, APRN, AGCNS-BC, OCN®, EBP-C, director of guidelines and quality at ONS, told...

Episode 395: Pharmacology 101: Monoclonal Antibodies

The ONS Podcast

“They [monoclonal antibodies] are able to cause tumor cell death by binding to and blocking to necessary growth factor signaling pathways for tumor cell survival. That’s going to be dependent on the target of the antibody, but I’ll give an example of epidermal growth factor, or EGFR. This is overexpressed in several different kinds of cancers where activation of this growth factor increases the amount of proliferation and migration of cancer cells. So, if we bind to it and block to it, then that would help halt these pathways and stop cancer cell growth,” Carissa Ganihong, PharmD,...

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...

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...

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...

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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“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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