ONS member Judy B. Koutlas RN, MS, OCN®, manager of oncology navigation at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, NC, discussed best practices and metrics related to navigation programs to improve nursing performance and patient quality of care during a session at the Oncology Nurse Advisor Navigation Summit.
For oncology nurses, physicians, and care professionals, the importance of implementing tools to collect and analyze big data cannot be understated. Through collaboration and multidisciplinary tactics, data can help drive improvements in the way patients are treated.
Budgets are political documents. When we look at a spreadsheet, for many of us the numbers are jumbles and the lines begin to blur. But reviewed closely, budgets are the prioritization of federal policy.
BRCA gene testing is on the rise for women who do not meet the referral requirements based on family history, researchers reported in study findings published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. At the same time, many high-risk women do not obtain the test and remain unidentified.
In their article in the April 2017 issue of the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, Compton and Chang provided a guide for nurses caring for patients with substance use disorder (SUD), including overview, diagnosis, and treatment of SUD as well as its implications for pain management and cancer treatment considerations when a patient with SUD is diagnosed with cancer.
On June 12, 2017, President Trump named Norman Sharpless, MD, as director of National Cancer Institute (NCI). Sharpless, formerly the director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina, is a practicing oncologist and cancer researcher. He will take over as for Doug Lowry, MD, who has been the NCI’s acting director since 2015.
On June 6, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aminolevulinic acid hydrochloride, known as ALA HCl (Gleolan, NX Development Corp.) as an optical imaging agent indicated in patients with gliomas (suspected World Health Organization Grades III or IV on preoperative imaging) as an adjunct for the visualization of malignant tissue during surgery.
As Oncology Nursing Month, May saw celebrations at the ONS 42nd Annual Congress and in our workplaces. Nurses on ONS staff enjoyed recognition and celebration of their commitment to our mission and you. They partner closely with members who volunteer their time and expertise in developing initiatives and priorities for ONS. I would like to describe a few of those initiatives and work groups that have met at the national office in the first six months of 2017.
My desire to become an oncology nurse began when I was 11 years old; like many children at that age I was struggling to discover who I would become. When my mother explained her breast cancer diagnosis to me, our very peaceful world froze for a moment. I grew up rurally in South Pomfret, VT, on many miles of dirt road that led to a beautiful, cozy little house. The idyllic world I lived in suddenly changed; although I could support my mother emotionally with compassion and love, others were working medical miracles to keep her well.
Alongside congressional representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Susan Brooks, ONS and other organizations are lobbying for support of the Protecting Access to Lifesaving Screenings (PALS) Act. This legislation would push insurance companies—along with the Veterans Health Administration—to provide access and coverage to breast cancer screenings for women aged 40–49.