My husband is a geriatrician.

My oldest daughter first became a music therapist and then completed an accelerated program in nursing. She is passionate about caring for older adults, just like her father. She completed her master’s degree in nursing and is now working as a palliative care nurse practitioner in a very busy urban university trauma center.

On March 5, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that Smiths Medical ASD Inc. is recalling its Medfusion model 3500 syringe pump because of issues associated with earlier software versions, including high-priority alarms during motor issues, wrong infusion restarts, screen locks, bolus interruptions, incorrect dose displays, low doses, motor errors, wrong settings recall, corrupt configurations, auto locks, and toolbox issues with loading dose time values.

On March 6, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved inotuzumab ozogamicin (Besponsa^®) for pediatric patients aged 1 year and older with relapsed or refractory CD22-positive B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Regular moderate- to high-intensity exercise can improve quality of life, fatigue, social function, and symptom management in patients with metastatic breast cancer, researchers reported in recent study findings. The results of the PREFERABLE-EFFECT study, presented at the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, demonstrated that regular exercise is safe and has positive effects for patients with metastatic breast cancer.

If 90% of success is preparation, how can one undergraduate lecture on oncology possibly be enough to prepare nurses to successfully care for the nearly 40% of Americans diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes?

RNs in the United States will see an average of 193,100 annual job openings from 2020–2030, with a 6% increase in employment—faster than the average for all occupations—the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in November 2023. Four years into the timeline for that statistical forecast, we need to take a pulse on continuing to grow not only the profession of nursing but also the oncology speciality.

On March 1, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved amivantamab-vmjw (Rybrevant^®) with carboplatin and pemetrexed for first-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 20 insertion variants, as detected by an FDA-approved test.

The latest in a line of legislation designed to promote health information technology interoperability and reduce information blocking, the 21st Century Cures Act began implementation in 2020. Since then, patients, nurses, and the entire healthcare team have appreciated benefits while also confronting challenges—namely with patients having immediate access to their health information and results before their nurse or other healthcare professional can explain the results in context.

During extended treatment and end-of-life care, patients, their family and caregivers, and the healthcare team can form close bonds and relationships. Those ties are abruptly severed when a patient dies, leaving each party to grieve alone. For healthcare professionals, sending a condolence card can provide closure for themselves and support for a deceased patient’s family, a team of nurses reported in an article published in the December 2023 issue of the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing.

On February 27, 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a safety communication to patients and healthcare providers about the potential risk for serious complications with BioZorb Marker and BioZorb LP Marker devices by Hologic, Inc., which are implanted in soft tissue, including breast tissue, to mark a site for medical procedures (e.g., radiation therapy for breast cancer treatment).