Educational Activities and Resources to Sharpen Your Skills

“Now, what we found is that epigenetics is actually heritable and it’s actually reversible. And we can now manipulate these principles with pharmacotherapy drugs,” Eric Zack, RN, OCN^®, BMTCN^®, clinical assistant professor at Loyola College Chicago Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing in Chicago, IL, and RN3 at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about the epigenetics drug class. 

“It is very much a collaborative group process. There are group meetings where we come to consensus on our different ratings. There’s so much support from ONS staff, even amongst our different groups, even when you’re assigned to one peer reviewer. Let’s say you go on vacation, sometimes we’re paired with other people, too. So there is some flexibility in the opportunity as well,” Holly Tenaglia, DNP, APRN, AGCNS-BC, OCN^®, lecturer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about what oncology nurses need to know about breast cancer treatment. 

“This is what totally drives the treatment decisions, and that’s why having that pathology report when the nurse is educating the patient is so important, because you can say, well, you have this kind of breast cancer, and this kind of breast cancer is generally treated this way,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN^®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in Missouri, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about what oncology nurses need to know about breast cancer treatment. 

“What I find most rewarding is connecting with nurses, who now understand the risks of exposure and are committed to minimizing their personal exposure. When I first started speaking about safe handling, there were a lot of nurses who were skeptical about the need for self-protection. I rarely see that now. Nurses are concerned for their own safety and more open to protective behaviors,” ONS member Martha Polovich, PhD, RN, AOCN^®-Emeritus, adjunct professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, told Liz Rodriguez, DNP, RN, OCN^®, CENP, ONS member and 50th anniversary committee member, during a conversation about the evolution of safe handling of hazardous drugs and ONS’s role in shaping safe handling policies.

“We know that some women are going to get called back. And it’s just because usually they can’t see something clearly enough. And so in most cases, those women are going to get cleared with one or two images, and they’re going to say, ‘Oh, we compress that better, we checked it with an ultrasound, we’re fine.’ That woman can go ahead and go. But we don’t want to miss those early breast cancers,” Suzanne Mahon, DNS, RN, AOCN^®, AGN-BC, FAAN, professor emeritus at Saint Louis University in Missouri, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS^®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about what oncology nurses need to know about breast cancer diagnosis.