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Episode 378: Considerations for Adolescent and Young Adult Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer

Release Date: 08/29/2025

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...

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...

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...

More Episodes

“She’s triple negative and has a very, very aggressive tumor. Instead of going on spring break that year, she sat in our chemo room and got chemo. Her friends from college are good to try to keep her involved and try to surround her and encourage her, but they’re right now in very, very different spots in their lives. She’s fighting for her life; her friends are fighting for the grade they get in a class—and that’s different,” ONS member Kristi Orbaugh, MSN, NP, AOCN^®, AOCNP^®, nurse practitioner at Community Hospital North Cancer Center in Indianapolis, IN, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about metastatic breast cancer in adolescent and young adult patients.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0

This podcast is sponsored by Lilly and is not eligible for NCPD contact hours. ONS is solely responsible for the criteria, objectives, content, quality, and scientific integrity of its programs and publications.

Episode Notes

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

“When we use ‘adolescent and young adult,’ we’re really talking about age 19–35. Some groups will say 15–39, but right around that age. When we think about that age, think about what all could be going on during those ages. Late teenagers, they may be going off to college, they may be graduating high school, trying to set up their own life, trying to become independent from mom and dad. If you’re talking about early to mid 30s, you could be talking about young parents, young career folks. So, just setting that into place makes you realize this can be a very tumultuous time for folks.” TS 2:06

“Unfortunately, this group tends to have more aggressive subtypes. We see more triple-negative in this group. We see more hormone-negative, HER2-positive in this group. Normal breast cancer cells should be stimulated by hormone. They are stimulated by hormones. So when you have a breast cancer cell that is not driven by hormones, it’s much more difficult to treat. We tend to see more aggressiveness in these tumors. We also see a higher incidence in non-Caucasian folks in this age group compared to the older age groups.” TS 4:53

“I think we have gotten much better about understanding the importance of fertility preservation and getting reproductive endocrinologists in, sooner rather than later. If we have earlier-stage cancers and we have patients that want to try to preserve eggs, preserve fertility, sperm banking. … If you have that time to talk to them—maybe a 21-year-old—the primary thing on her mind is not how many children she wants to have one day. Maybe she’s not even thought about having kids yet. It’s still a question you need to [ask]. Do you want to try to preserve fertility? Do you want to try to harvest some eggs? That’s a conversation that needs to be had and is very, very important for that age group.” TS 10:35

“One thing that helps is if you can get them [into] reputable support groups with people their own age that are going through what they're going through. Someone else that doesn't have hair, someone else that isn't going to make it to the big board meeting or isn’t going to get the promotion this year because they've had to take a medical leave. Someone else that understands it differently.” TS 16:47

“In breast cancer, many of those biomarkers just get reflexed. And what I mean by reflexed is a breast cancer pathology comes through, or a breast cancer specimen comes through, and it just automatically gets tested for X, Y, Z. HER2 and of course ER/PR. Now we understand that we don’t just need to know whether they're HER2 positive or HER2 negative. We need to know: What is the IHC score? And even if the IHC score is zero, is there any membrane staining? And then we need to know what’s their ESR1, their PTEN, their AKT, their PIK3CA. Those are so important to know.” TS 18:11

“I think it’s important to try to remember what our priorities were when we were in our 20s—what our priorities were when we were starting out as young mothers or starting out our career. Because that’s where these folks are. … I can’t imagine in the midst of college, when I’m trying to be independent, to suddenly have to be at home and rely on my mom to take me to my chemo appointment. … So I think one really important bias is to remember where they are in the developmental stages of life. They’re not 40-something. They haven’t lived X amount of life, and we need to take a step back and try to remember when we were their age, what was important to us? Where were our priorities at that point? And then hear them when they’re telling us what’s important to them.” TS 29:22

“From a female standpoint … we frequently throw these patients into menopause or have early menopausal symptoms, and I think we forget how devastating that can be. … They now are at higher risk for osteopenia or osteoporosis. … And then we tell people, ‘Be as normal as possible, get back and do those normal things.’ Well, they’re in a relationship, and they want to be intimate [but] suddenly having sexual intercourse is incredibly painful. Or if it’s not painful, sometimes they’ve just lost pure interest in that. They don’t feel confident about their body. All of those things need to be addressed because patients are trying to live each day as normally as possible.” TS 31:55

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