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Earlier palliative care for oncology patients with advanced cancer is the new frontier.

A nurse-led initiative to discharge patients before noon has paid off at the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, according to Kathleen Edmondson-Martin, MA, RN, OCN, Clinical Nurse Manager in the hospital’s bone marrow transplant unit.

An electronic “facility board” situated on a wall in the nurses’ station of a medical/surgical unit led to more clinical interventions for abnormal vital signs, a reduction in falls among high-risk patients, and more ordering of specialty beds, according to nurses from Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Eastern Regional Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA.

Getting patients to the dentist may not seem like an oncology nurse navigator’s duty, but that’s exactly the task assigned to Colleen Palay, BSN, RN, oncology nurse navigator at the Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, OH.

A hematology unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, succeeded in greatly reducing chemotherapy wait time and increasing satisfaction among inpatients, as described by Elena Lubimov, RN, BSN, OCN, at the Oncology Nursing Society 41st Annual Congress.

More than 30,000 healthcare professionals from around the world attended the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2016 Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.

With patient navigation now established as a valuable component of cancer care, most providers understand what “navigation” means, but fresh insights such as those provided by a veteran of navigation, Lillie D. Shockney, RN, BS, MAS, are welcomed.

The identification and fulfillment of their life goals should be an essential part of the care that cancer patients receive, according to Lillie D. Shockney, RN, BS, MAS.

Welcome to this issue of Journal of Oncology Navigation & Survivorship (JONS), the official publication of the Academy of Oncology Nurse & Patient Navigators.

In an effort to learn more about NCI-MATCH, we asked the Acting Director, Douglas R. Lowy, MD, to speak with us. What follows is our exchange.