Episode 415: Myelodysplastic Syndrome Treatment Considerations for Oncology Nurses
Release Date: 05/15/2026
Episode 433: Cancer Treatments for Noncancer Indications: Chemotherapy/Immunotherapy
The ONS Podcast
“Unlike our cancer indications where we use these medications often to activate the immune system to target cancerous cells, in noncancer indications, the goal is really to either suppress an overactive immune or inflammatory cells or modulate the immune system. Immune modulation by use of chemotherapy and immunotherapy can help reduce abnormal inflammation, decrease autoantibody production, and also can alter T-cell and B-cell activity,” ONS member Kelsey Miller, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, OCN®, clinical nurse specialist in oncology and infusion therapy at Reading Hospital in West Reading, PA,...
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Episode 432: Long-Term Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Considerations for Oncology Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“It’s a chronic disease. It never goes away for some people, and so therefore it has these periods of remission where it’s really quiet and well controlled. Then there can be periods of flares where you’re actively engaged in treatment or it’s impacting other pieces. There’s this feeling patients have of, ‘When am I going to have that flare?’ You know, this anticipatory anxiety of, ‘When are things going to be done differently?’ or ‘When do I need to change?’” ONS member Caitlin Murphy, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, AOCNP®, chief nurse practitioner at Dana-Farber Cancer...
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Episode 431: Oncologic Emergencies 101: Urinary Obstruction
The ONS Podcast
“Think about all the important things our kidneys do for the body. Those things are compromised. If we have excess buildup of toxins and waste in the body, you’re having problems with fluid reabsorption. Then you have also problems with electrolytes not being balanced. Then in turn, you have ongoing shutdown of systems. So the cardiopulmonary system gets compromise. Your circulatory system then gets compromised. And then all the things in the body that depend upon ongoing circulatory flow are then causing major resets in the system that need to be addressed,” ONS member Brenda S....
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Episode 430: Leadership Unlocked: Is It Your Time to Serve?
The ONS Podcast
“If you are considering board service, I would say take the leap. Start with your local chapter. It will give you some valuable skills that will help prepare you when you are applying for your national level. And I always say, if you want to do it, just do it because what’s the worst that can happen? They can say no, but that doesn’t mean that you will never serve on a board. I always tell people delayed is not denied,” Cassandra Green, DNP, RN, OCN®, ONS member and past president of the Oncology Nursing Certification Corporation (ONCC) Board of Directors, told Evelyn Wempe, DNP,...
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Episode 429: Radiation Site-Specific Side Effects: CNS Cancers
The ONS Podcast
“They’re really worried that radiation is going to be painful. So they come in for that first day of treatment very anxious. With our patients with brain cancer, we’re using the masks on the table, and those masks are very tight and hold their heads very, very still. So they’ll be very worried about being claustrophobic. We may start out the first day or two with a little bit of [lorazepam]. And they’ll come to me and they’ll say, ‘This really hasn’t been as bad as I thought it was going to be,’” ONS member Catherine McCluskey, BSN, RN, OCN®, ROCN™, radiation oncology...
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Episode 428: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Treatment Considerations for Oncology Nurses
The ONS Podcast
“Measurable residual disease is where I think the terminology fits best in that, it is intended to measure the amount of cancer cells that are present in the blood or bone marrow at the time the sample was collected. We can identify one cancer cell in a million. Where that can be really valuable is when we start to think about the duration of treatments and the response to some of our treatments,” ONS member Caitlin Murphy, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, AOCNP®, chief nurse practitioner at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, TCTCN™, oncology clinical...
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Episode 427: Pharmacology 101: Resistance Pathways
The ONS Podcast
“A good way of thinking about this is this is the survival of the fittest clone. There could be a portion of a cancer that naturally has some resistance or ability to survive a particular drug. And over time, as the other cells around it are dying off, that particular clone is able to replicate and continue to survive in the face of that drug therapy and eventually take over as being the fittest clone. At that point, we’re often seeing disease progression,” Danielle Roman, PharmD, BCOP, manager of clinical pharmacy services at the Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute in Pittsburgh,...
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Episode 426: Tools to Support Patients and Nurses Through Medical Trauma in Oncology
The ONS Podcast
“When people with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] get quite avoidant—and that can be expressed in so many different ways—the implications can be really profound. I think an important invitation to oncologists and oncology nurses and primary care providers who care for people battling cancer is let’s explore what's underneath these avoidant behaviors. Is it a very practical thing? Or is it that underneath this avoidant behavior is really profound fear?” James C. Jackson, PsyD, research professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, told Lenise Taylor, MN,...
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Episode 425: How AI Can Help Healthcare Organizations Improve the Cancer Experience
The ONS Podcast
“In oncology specifically, where care is complex, artificial intelligence (AI) can really synthesize large volumes of clinical information, flag risks such as treatment complications, and support adherence to evidence-based pathways. For nurses specifically, this enables them more time for direct patient care, clinical judgment, and care coordination, and really practice to the top of their license while reducing repetitive time and administrative tasks,” Jenn Frith, DNP, RN, OCN®, NE-BC, associate vice president of clinical operations at Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, NC, told Jaime...
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Episode 424: Radiation Site-Specific Side Effects: Cancers of the Pelvis
The ONS Podcast
“Think about what organs lie in the radiation field, and anything that lies in that radiation field is likely going to have some potential temporary—hopefully temporary—side effects. If you think about the pelvis, the things that live in there are the bladder, urethra, some bowel, rectum, reproductive organs, skin, some lymph nodes. And so, all of those things could potentially have associated side effects,” ONS member Kayla Kafka-Peterson, BSN, RN, ROCN™, nurse navigator and leader in the brachytherapy and peri-anesthesia programs at UCLA Health, in Los Angeles, CA, told Lenise...
info_outline“We want to make sure that we discuss the details of the treatment and what treatments there are, whether it’s an oral drug, whether it’s a subcutaneous injection or an IV injection, [the patient’s] potential for responding, whether this treatment is curative or supportive, and what the number of visits are. All of those different pieces of information that go into the decision-making process are really important,” ONS member Sara Tinsley-Vance, PhD, APRN, AOCN®, nurse practitioner and quality-of-life researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL, told Lenise Taylor, MN, RN, AOCNS®, TCTCN™, oncology clinical specialist at ONS, during a conversation about myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) treatment considerations.
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 May 15, 2027. 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 about the treatment considerations for MDS.
Episode Notes
- Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.
- ONS Podcast™ episodes:
- ONS Voice articles:
- Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
- Oncology Nursing Forum article: Frailty in Patients With Hematologic Malignancies and Those Undergoing Transplantation: A Scoping Review
- ONS books:
- BMTCN™ Certification Review Manual (second edition)
- Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Manual for Nursing Practice (third edition)
- ONS course: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation™
- ONS Learning Library: Hematology, Cellular Therapy, and Stem Cell Transplantation
- ONS Symptom Intervention resources:
- Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation: MDS Drugs and Treatments
- Blood Cancer United: MDS Treatment
- HealthTree Foundation
- Myelodysplastic Syndromes Foundation
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 goals that I try to consolidate to make sure they’re consistent with the patient’s goals are to improve their counts, especially the anemia or cytopenias. If they’re getting blood transfusions, we want to reduce the number of transfusions that they receive because we know that’s linked to reduced overall survival, and it really impacts quality of life. ... And then for high-risk patients, it’s a more serious discussion because we know that they are the ones who can progress to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). And we’re trying to delay progression to AML. That means we’re trying to improve their survival and we’re also trying to manage their cytopenias and decrease their infection risk.” TS 2:28
“If we look at approvals for low-risk disease and high-risk disease, those were really made based on the Revised International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-R) and sometimes the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS). Under those classification systems, when we think of lower-risk MDS, we think of patients who are primarily anemic but don’t have increased blasts in their bone marrow. ... For higher-risk MDS, we want to have that discussion with those patients because their life expectancy is much shorter than patients with lower-risk MDS. We want to see if hematopoietic stem cell transplant would be something that they would be interested in if they don’t have a lot of comorbidities and are relatively healthy.” TS 11:41
“There are a lot of things to consider—[patients’] blood counts, comorbidities, whether they’re frail, and what their goals are. There are some patients where there’s no way they would want to go through transplant. And some patients want to be cured, so it just depends on your patient.” TS 14:22
“I think of hematopoietic allogeneic transplants as a treatment for more of the patients with higher-risk MDS. ... With the Molecular International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-M), a patient can have pretty good blood counts and not have increased blasts in the bone marrow. You could send them for a transplant referral upfront without having to give them additional treatment. ... There is a recent publication that said if a patient doesn’t have more than 10% blast, you could refer to transplant as a first option. ... Also, if you had a lower-risk patient who is relatively young and doesn’t have any other treatment options, this would also be a patient that you could refer to transplant to see if we could care for them, and then they wouldn’t have to be getting transfused all the time.” TS 21:12
“I think that we often think low-risk, no treatment needed, but it depends on the person. They often need ongoing supportive care to manage their symptoms even if they’re not getting treatment. And just because we’re not treating them, active observation, bringing them in to see how they’re doing, if they’ve had infections, if their blood counts are changing, that is paying attention to them and doing something. Just because they’re low-risk doesn’t mean they don’t need anything and we can just schedule for a one-year follow-up.” TS 26:30