With more than 90% of oncology radiation practices reporting staffing shortages, patients are facing new barriers to accessing timely cancer care, the American Society for Radiation Oncology said when announcing its 2023 staffing survey results. At about half of those practices, the lack of adequate staffing is delaying treatment for patients seeking interventional or palliative radiation therapy—and reducing patient navigation services—both of which ultimately influence patient outcomes.
Reinforcing a commitment that palliative care is a priority, U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) reintroduced the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (PCHETA), an ONS health policy priority that benefits both patients and healthcare providers, in July 2023. The bipartisan legislation would bolster the palliative care and hospice workforce and meet the increasing need for care by investing in training, education, and research.
As innovative nurses and other healthcare professionals create libraries of mobile apps and other technologies that allow patients and providers to communicate remotely about oral chemotherapy treatment, how can they be better used consistently across practices to achieve optimal patient outcomes?
As overall monthly unit sales of e-cigarettes increased by 46.6% from January 2020–December 2022, according to June 2023 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tobacco cessation advocates continue to fight an uphill battle. Purchases grew from 15.5 million units to 22.7 million units in the study period.
In 1980 when Chicago and Cleveland became the Society’s first charted chapters, ONS established a new way of connecting and supporting oncology nurses directly in their local communities. Today, more than 200 local ONS chapters are thriving throughout the United States.
On August 2, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved trifluridine and tipiracil (Lonsurf®) with bevacizumab, for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) previously treated with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin- and irinotecan-based chemotherapy, an anti-VEGF biologic therapy, and if RAS wild-type, an anti-EGFR therapy. FDA had previously approved single-agent trifluridine and tipiracil for the indication in September 2015.
As an oncology advanced practice provider, I saw a need to enhance the scheduling process for transplant and cellular therapy nurse coordinator visits at my institution. In response, I developed and implemented the following quality improvement project and successfully reduced scheduling error rates by 95%.
On August 1, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported Baxter Healthcare Corporation’s June 15, 2023, recall of SIGMA Spectrum infusion pumps with master drug library (version 8) and Spectrum IQ infusion systems with dose IQ safety software (version 9) because of false alarms for upstream occlusion after pump software upgrades to version v8.01.01 and v9.02.01, respectively. FDA identified it as a class I recall, the most serious type of recall, where use of the devices may cause serious injuries or death.
An overwhelming majority of nurses say that terminally ill patients with cancer in California who use medical cannabis under Ryan’s Law in an inpatient setting have better symptom management and satisfaction with the quality of their stay, according to survey findings reported during the 48th Annual ONS Congress® in April 2023.
On July 31, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved dostarlimab-gxly (Jemperli) with carboplatin and paclitaxel, followed by single-agent dostarlimab-gxly, for primary advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer that is mismatch repair deficient, as determined by an FDA-approved test, or microsatellite instability-high.