Three nurses serve in the U.S. Congress, and the profession briefly added one more federal representation at the agency level as well. President Joe Biden appointed Rear Admiral Susan Orsega, MSN, RN, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, a nurse practitioner, as acting surgeon general while Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBH, who served as former president Barack Obama’s surgeon general, was waiting for Senate confirmation. The position is often referred to as the “nation’s doctor,” although Orsega was the third nurse to hold the title before Murthy assumed his current post.
On April 16, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nivolumab (Opdivo®) in combination with fluoropyrimidine- and platinum-containing chemotherapy for advanced or metastatic gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma.
Get to know Teresa Knoop, MSN, RN, AOCN®, ONS director-at-large from 2020–2023, an assistant director in the clinical trials office at Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center in Brentwood, TN.
A perhaps unexpected phenomenon the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic created around the world was countless supply shortages. Most at worst were inconvenient (e.g., yeast shortages from pandemic breadmaking) or humorous (e.g., toilet paper memes), but one that oncology nurses experienced far too close to home was downright deadly: lack of proper personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies for handling hazardous drugs.
With nearly half a century of outstanding contributions to the field of oncology nursing, ONS member Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, CHPN, FAAN, FPCN, was selected by the ONS Board of Directors to receive the Society’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. Ferrell is the director of the division of nursing research and education at City of Hope in Duarte, CA, principal investigator of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) project, and a world-renowned author and lecturer.
Contributing to the orientation and onboarding of new advanced practice RN (APRN) providers supports optimal patient outcomes, professional satisfaction, and nurse retention. Orientation involves working through the hospital’s training program, policies and procedures, organizational structures, and mission or vision statements, whereas onboarding builds engagement and relationships in the organization over many weeks to months. Some institutions have formalized, detailed processes for orientation and onboarding, but others may offer very little structure and support.
On April 13, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy®) for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who previously received a platinum-containing chemotherapy and either a programmed death receptor-1 or a programmed death-ligand 1 inhibitor.
Only 4%–9% of patients with ovarian or cervical cancer use palliative care, but the numbers are much lower for Hispanic and Asian women than for non-Hispanic White women, according to researchers’ findings reported in Data in Brief.
Once patients stop responding to platinum-based chemotherapy for locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer, their treatment options had been somewhat limited: PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors were effective in only 13%–29% of patients and taxanes in only 11%–13%. When the antibody drug conjugate enfortumab vedotin was approved in late 2019, it offered new hope for patients and providers, with clinical trials reporting a 44% objective response rate.
Only 19% of strategies to implement clinical practice guidelines are fully effective and the majority (43%) are not effective at all, according to the findings from a clinical review in the European Union. Effective guideline implementation requires teamwork, interprofessional engagement, and selecting the most appropriate tool for the job.