ACCC Celebrates Oncology Nursing Month

May celebrates Oncology Nursing Month, and ACCC recognizes the integral role oncology nurses play in cancer care delivery. From anti-cancer treatment and symptom management support to integrative therapy referrals and patient advocacy, oncology nurses wear many hats. They build some of the greatest bonds patients have with their healthcare providers and hear firsthand what patients need to improve their quality of life. This year, ACCC celebrates the many innovative oncology nurses who are leading programs and developing tools to improve the patient experience and outcomes.

Notes on Nursing

ACCCBuzz features a quarterly blog series by Robin B. Atkins, RN, OCN, who is a symptom management triage nurse at Virginia Oncology Associates. In her posts, Atkins shares what skills and responsibilities nurses in oncology need to thrive in the specialty. Yet, the most valuable skill nurses have (and some by default) is their ability to form strong bonds with their patients. For example, in her second post, Atkins discusses the “real work” of nurses. “Relational practice is a distinctive nuance of the work performed by nurses,” she writes. “Relational work does not require a doctor’s orders, but without it there is no humanity in the delivery of patient care.” This relational practice in oncology nursing can take on many forms, such anticipation of patients’ needs, empathy, honesty, and altruism, among others. Without nurses’ relational practice, the patient experience in healthcare would be mechanical and dry.

Atkins says: “In cancer care, victory can take multiple forms. When surviving cancer is not one of them, families will tell you that despite this outcome, what matters most is how the nurses made them feel—relational work, remembered.”

Nurses Are Innovators, Too

Though oncology nurses may share the same title, there are many areas within care delivery that they can hone their expertise. For example, Theresa Roelke, MSN, RN, AGNP-C, is a geriatric nurse practitioner at Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute. She won her cancer program a 2020 ACCC Innovator Award for developing a 3-D lung nodule tool—a tool to be used in any care setting to better educate patients about their lung nodules and cancer risk after low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening. Roelke’s pilot study showed that use of the 3-D tool decreased patient distress during their shared decision-making consultation, as 68 percent of patients found the tool to be “extremely helpful.”

As a cardio-oncology nurse navigator (and former registered oncology infusion nurse), Kerry Skurka, RN, BSN, co-leads the health system’s interdisciplinary cardio-oncology clinic. This clinic was created through nursing and physician leadership collaboration to educate patients with cancer about the potential risks to heart health posed by oncology treatments. The clinic also provides cardiotoxicity support and surveillance, thus creating a “proactive cardio-oncology” mindset and winning the cancer program a 2020 ACCC Innovator Award. Now, nurse navigators like Skurka identify and refer oncology patients on cardiotoxic anti-cancer treatments to the clinic to ensure that today’s cancer survivors do not become the heart failure patients of tomorrow.

Nurse Advocates

Oncology nurses can also be patients’ greatest advocates. One such nurse, Sandy Allten, RN, OCN CCRP, research coordinator at AdventHealth Daytona Beach, discovered that one company was educating hairdressers and barbers on the “ABC’s” of melanoma detection on the scalp, head, and neck. “As an oncology nurse, this innovative approach made so much sense to me,” she says. “Who knows your head better than your hairdresser? If your hairdresser received training in the detection of skin cancers of the scalp, head, and neck, he or she could become the first line in detection.”

So Allten began to research more about the article’s authors and what hairdressers can do to help their clients identify suspicious lesions early. Upon finding Eyes on Cancer’s 20-minute online educational program video about the different types of skin cancer, Allten brought it to her own hairdresser, who quickly became an advocate for the program. As both women wanted to engage a greater audience, Allten worked with her local Oncology Nursing Society chapter and cancer program to endorse the Hairstylist Melanoma Challenge. This project was created to share the well-established Eyes on Cancer educational program to train as many hairdressers, oncology nurses, and AdventHealth staff members as possible.

In 2020, Allten shared that “there are currently 39,000 ONS nurses. If each ONS nurse encouraged his or her own hairdresser to participate, the numbers would be staggering. With approximately 39,000 hairdressers seeing potentially 6 to 12 clients per day, we could be affecting positive change in hundreds of thousands of people daily.”

From the few stories highlighted above, it is clear that oncology nurses positively impact their patients and programs daily. Please join ACCC this month as we celebrate the innovations, successes, and accomplishments of these key members of the multidisciplinary cancer care team.