Carole Elledge, DNP, RN, AOCN^®, clinical program specialist at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, TX, described the concept of nursing competencies with a kitchen metaphor: “It’s kind of like baking a cake. If you’re going to bake a cake, you need all the ingredients.” For nurses, she said, the ingredients of competency include not only hands-on clinical skills, but also an ability to see past the disease, compassion, critical thinking, self-motivation, patience and insight, leadership, a team approach, and more. “There’s much more to competency than just skills.”

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has guidelines on nutrition and physical activity for cancer survivors that focus on healthy body weight, physical activity, and a diet high in vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. To assess how adherence to those guidelines impacts disease-free survival (DFS), relapse-free survival (RFS), or overall survival (OS), researchers conducted a prospective study of 992 patients with stage III colon cancer who enrolled in an adjuvant chemotherapy clinical trial between 1991 and 2001. The researchers presented the study at the ASCO Annual Meeting.

Each year, the ONS Board of Directors sponsors a session at the ONS Annual Congress on a particularly important, high-impact topic. During a session at the 42nd Annual Congress in Denver, CO, the leadership chose the up-and-coming nursing role of care coordination and transition management.

More than 130,000 new cases of colorectal cancers (CRCs) are diagnosed in the United States each year, representing 8% of all new annual cancer cases. The rate of patients with CRC surviving more than five years is 65.1%; however, patients with metastatic disease (mCRC) have a poorer prognosis, with only 13.5% surviving more than years. As many as 40% of patients with mCRC remain candidates for third-line therapy, with some patients requiring up to five lines of therapy because of drug resistance.

When an oncology nurse becomes a patient with cancer, the experience can shed light on the cancer journey and help other nurses comprehend what their patients go through.

Five to Ten Percent of patients with cancer will need to visit the intensive care unit (ICU) for a life-threatening condition. In fact, estimates suggest that nearly 30% of patients with esophageal cancer or acute leukemia and those undergoing allogenic stem cell transplantation will need ICU care.

Nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU) generally see patients with cancer only when they are extremely sick—not throughout the extensive cancer journey they go through before they get to the ICU. Educating and familiarizing ourselves, as ICU nurses, with a patient’s oncology plan, goals, and history can improve overall care.

I have the privilege of managing and being the sole provider in a unique program. I work in the Hereditary Cancer Program at Saint Louis University Cancer Center, where I provide risk assessment services and education about genetic testing to individuals and families in the region. It’s an amazing nursing role, and I can truly help people prevent cancer and manage their risk.

Men younger than 65 years who sleep less than six hours per night have an increased risk of death from prostate cancer, according to the results of a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 2017 annual meeting.