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Episode 388: ONS 50th Anniversary: Milestones in Oncology Advocacy and Health Policy

Release Date: 11/07/2025

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

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

“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, DNP, RN, OCN^®, CNE, ONS member and member of the ONS 50th anniversary committee, during a conversation about the future of oncology nursing advocacy and health policy. Wilson spoke with Damron and ONS member Janice Phillips, PhD, RN, CENP, FADLN, FAAN, about how ONS has advanced advocacy and policy efforts over the past 50 years and its approaches for the future.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0

Episode Notes

ONS Voice articles:

ONS courses:

Oncology Nursing Forum 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

Phillips: “I think that there are so many pressing issues, but I’m going to start with any kind of threats or legislation that’s poised to take away safety-net resources. It’s really going to set us back because we all know that, particularly for minorities and certain other underserved populations, they have experienced poor cancer outcomes for a variety of reasons, variety of socioeconomic reasons, lack of access to quality screening resources—you name it. When you take away those safety net resources and take away resources for people who are already underserved, uninsured, or underinsured, it also jeopardizes their ability to get proper screening, get proper follow-up, have access to state of the art cancer services. I think the lack of affordability of health care is a problem that continues to challenge us, whether you on Medicaid or whether you have limited insurance.” TS 10:16

Damron: “Because ONS is so grounded in science and research—we’re not just a clinical organization; we’re grounded in scholarship, science, research, and publication—we’re able to take this vast network of strong clinicians [and combine it] with amazing scientists. … We’ve had some amazing scientists come out of ONS; some of the leading nurse scientists of all time were also oncology nurses. So by combining this, we’re able to make a difference at the state and federal level. So the advocacy work that I’ve been involved in, state and federal levels, really involved working with the ONS staff involved with advocacy and those scientists and clinicians who brought that expertise.” TS 18:19

Phillips: “I think expanding the work around multiculturalism in oncology will always be important. Are there any new partnerships or avenues that ONS can reach out to or explore? Maybe there are other specialty organizations or groups—and not always necessarily nursing— because as we think about the determinants of health, we think about things like health and all policies. Maybe there are other disciplines or other specialties that we need to embrace as we launch our agendas.” TS 23:28

Damron: “As nurses, just our basic nursing training, we get these skills—we see a problem, we identify the problem, we assess what we’re going to do about it, we do it, and then we evaluate what we did. Does that work or not? That’s how you make policy. So we were all trained in this. Then what you bring on top of that are oncology nursing experience, whether it’s clinical, whether it’s research, whether it’s teaching, practice, etc. Those continue to refine those skills that are basic to us as nurses. We have this built-in skill set, and we need to own it and understand it.” TS 30:25

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