As nurses, the inclination to nurture and care for others is in our nature, yet sometimes we forget to care for ourselves. That’s an easy routine to fall into, but optimizing our mental well-being improves both the quality of care we provide and our overall health. So today, right now, is all about you. Here are four simple, sustainable ways you can safeguard your mental health, which includes your emotional, psychological, and social well-being, amid the ever-present chaos.  

Preventing overdoses—from any substance, but particularly opioids—is an urgent need during the U.S. opioid epidemic that involves a four-step process: prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced. HHS released a new overdose prevention strategy in October 2021 to increase access to services for patients and their families who use substances that can put them at risk for overdose.

On December 15, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved abatacept (Orencia^®) for prophylaxis of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD), in combination with a calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) and methotrexate (MTX), in adults and pediatric patients aged 2 and older who are undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) from a matched or one allele-mismatched unrelated donor.

Many of today’s new drug approvals and standard-of-care treatments have a companion diagnostic test that identifies biomarkers in a patient’s tumor tissue or blood to determine whether they are an appropriate candidate for the therapy. When those results show that they’re not a good match for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment, the findings may identify a biomarker-directed clinical trial as an alternative option. Here’s how oncology nurses can help patients understand which clinical trials listed on their test results might be an option for them.

Katrina A.B. Goddard, PhD, a genetic epidemiologist who worked on 25 federally funded research studies, is the director of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) as of October 2021, where she oversees a range of cancer-related research.

Patients with cancer are more likely to contract the COVID-19 coronavirus and experience complications from the infection—and the risk is highest for Black patients, study findings show. Researchers published the report in JAMA Oncology.

Clinical trials are led by a principal investigator (PI) with a research team that may include physicians, nurses, social workers, and other healthcare professionals. PIs can represent a variety of disciplines, and nurse scientists often hold that role.

Racial inequality persists across the entire healthcare spectrum—from patient disparities to the healthcare workforce’s current makeup and even to the education of the next generation of practitioners. But nurse scientists conducting clinical trials have the opportunity to change that.

Under a newly refreshed strategy, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center is expanding models in the healthcare industry that reduce program costs and improving quality and outcomes for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, the agency announced in an October 2021 white paper.

Adolescent and young adults (AYAs)—those diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 39—comprise about 5% of all annual cancer diagnoses. The population has unique challenges that must be considered as part of patient-centered survivorship care planning.