In September, ONS conducted a member survey with 14,728 randomly selected members. Thanks to the 1,842 (12.7%) who responded, the ONS Board of Directors and staff have learned much about the pressing challenges you face in your practice. Most frequently cited were appropriate staffing levels or mix (64%), staff training and education (50%), sufficient patient care resources (38%), and compassion fatigue (36%). You also added many other challenges to the list. This information will guide ONS in developing resources and services for you. It facilitates our identifying gaps in what we offer and what may be needed.
Albert Einstein once said, “Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value.” This is symbolic of how the ONS Board of Directors and staff are always looking for ways to improve your membership experience and to be of value to our members. One of the ways we do this is by engaging local chapters at the regional chapter office program (RCOP). We want to know your chapters’ best practices and challenges so that we can share this information with other chapters and ascertain how ONS can serve as a resource at the local level.
At Penn Nursing, we talk in terms of precision science. Advances in precision science will allow nurses to better understand the complex mechanisms underlying a patient’s health, disorder, and symptoms. It helps us to stratify who is at highest risk for disorders and symptoms and allows us to tailor interventions most likely to be effective for individuals. Precision science integrates genes, lifestyles, and the physical, social, and economic environments that affect health and well-being.
As technology and scientific discovery accelerate to meet the growing needs of healthcare providers, cancer treatment and prevention are being redefined. The paradigm is shifting in care, and precision medicine is ushering in novel, individualized ways of treating patients with cancer.
To better understand the real-world impacts of the advances in treatment for multiple myeloma (MM) over the past 15 years, Safiya Abouzaid, PharmD, Celgene Corporation in Summit, NJ, and colleagues sought to describe trends in novel therapy use, total healthcare costs, and survival outcomes among patients newly diagnosed with MM in the United States since 2000. They presented their findings on Sunday, December 4, at the 58th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, CA.
High cost of treatment, in addition to limited reimbursement, can limit ongoing support services for patients in post-treatment settings, despite quality of life (QoL) being considered important to positive health outcomes after treatments. The lack of such support was discussed in terms of hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) by Connie E. Chen, MD, Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA, on Sunday, December 4, at the 58th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, CA.
A bleeding-risk tool is needed that can determine which patients on anticoagulation therapy (OAT) for venous thromboembolism (VTE) may have an annual rate of major bleeding over 3%. “[Three percent] is the cut-point at which the risk of continued anticoagulant therapy exceeds the benefit,” said Philip S. Wells, MD, Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa and the Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada. Wells presented the research at the 58th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, CA.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common acute leukemia in adults, and treatment outcomes have improved only modestly in recent decades. Ankit Shah, MD, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, sought to analyze the differences in trends between teaching versus non-teaching medical institutions for admitted adult patients with active AML in terms of hospital cost, length of stay, in-hospital mortality, and complication rates. Shah presented the research team’s analysis findings at the 58th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego, CA.
Researchers classify induction therapy for patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) as intensive or nonintensive. Because of tolerability concerns for patients older than 65 years, nonintensive therapies are increasingly used.
