All Articles

A combined Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program at The Ohio State University (OSU) James Cancer Hospital provides fellows with a core curriculum to promote quality cancer care from diagnosis to end of life.

Informal caregivers play a critical role in the emotional, functional, and medical support of adult cancer survivors, and a burgeoning area of research shows that the well-being of informal cancer caregivers is associated with the mental health and quality of life of the cancer survivors in their care, according to Kristin Litzelman, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

In this issue, we present original research as well as coverage from recent oncology meetings. On the navigation front, we feature articles from our own Academy of Oncology Nurse & Patient Navigators (AONN+) West Coast Regional Meeting.

The authors present their findings from a study aiming to determine the relationships of anxiety, social desirability, and demographics with group cohesion within a group intervention for African American breast cancer survivors.

At the AONN+ West Coast Regional Meeting, Standardized Navigation Task Force members Tricia Strusowski and Cheryl Bellomo discuss the metrics and provide tools to employ in their implementation.

Community navigators help those with an unequal burden of cancer, which is often heaviest among racial/ethnic minorities, patients with lower socioeconomic status, and residents of rural areas who do not have equal access to healthcare systems and do not always receive timely, standard care when confronted with a cancer diagnosis.

Although the term “navigator” is still fairy new and its many definitions are still being established, a growing awareness of navigators and the substantial role they play in patient care has underlined the need for role delineation in the field.

Financial toxicity can be long lasting, and the extent to which patients are affected often depends on when in the time of their benefit year they are diagnosed.

According to Lillie Shockney, Program Director and Cofounder of AONN+, a silo mentality is an inward-looking mindset that commonly occurs in healthcare organizations. Individuals operating in this manner resist sharing information and resources with other people or departments within the organization and conclude that it is not their responsibility to coordinate their activities with peers or other groups.

Nancy Sayegh-Rooney, RN, Pulmonary Nurse Navigator and Certified Tobacco Specialist Counselor at Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island, New York, leads a 6-week smoking cessation class in the spring and fall that is free and open to the community.