Fatigue in the Infusion Chair: Making Our Teaching Count

Cancer-related fatigue: not ordinary tiredness.

Image via Shutterstock

“I’m just really tired.”

She says it quietly, almost apologetically, while I’m flushing her port. If I’m not careful, I could nod and say, “That’s common,” and move on. But over time, I’ve learned that when a patient says “tired,” they’re often describing something much bigger.

Cancer-related fatigue isn’t the kind of tired that comes after a long day. It’s not fixed by a good night’s sleep. It’s the kind that makes someone say, “If I shower, I have to rest before I can get dressed,” or “If I cook dinner, that’s it for the day.”

In the infusion chair, fatigue is everywhere. During chemotherapy and radiation, most patients experience it at some point. For some, it lingers long after treatment ends. And when fatigue begins to interfere with daily life—cooking, driving, bathing, managing medications—it quietly erodes independence.

Talking to patients about fatigue.

But fatigue conversations are easy to rush. We have vitals to check, labs to review, medications to hang. It’s tempting to treat fatigue as expected background noise. I’ve found that the difference between a rushed fatigue conversation and a meaningful one often comes down to slowing down by just a minute.

Instead of asking only, “How tired are you?” I […]

2026-03-04T14:07:41-05:00March 4th, 2026|Nursing, Oncology nursing, patient experience, Patients|2 Comments
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The Language of Side Effects: How Words Shape a Patient’s Experience

Image: Shutterstock

The first time I told a patient, “You will probably lose your hair,” she froze. I watched her face change—the hope leaving her eyes before treatment even began. I meant to prepare her, but my certainty sounded like a sentence. Since then, I’ve learned the quiet power of words like might, can, and some patients. The difference is small, but to the person sitting in the chair, it’s everything.

Nurses speak thousands of words a day—vital signs, medication names, discharge instructions—but within that rhythm live phrases that shape how people cope. Our goal is never to soften reality or minimize side effects; patients deserve truth. What matters is how we deliver it—whether our tone invites fear or fosters partnership, whether our words validate the feelings that follow.

When I say, “You will feel tired,” the message sounds absolute, leaving no room for variation or hope. When I say, “Many people feel tired, and we’ll help you manage it if it happens,” the information is identical, but the intention changes. One predicts suffering; the other promises support.

Research confirms what bedside nurses sense: framing matters. In a randomized trial of more […]

2026-02-03T11:25:41-05:00February 3rd, 2026|patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Cost-Cutting and Nursing: Are We Solving the Wrong Problems?

Courtney Desy, BSN, RN, OCN

Across the country, hospitals are under sustained financial pressure. Margins are thin, reimbursement often fails to cover the cost of care, supply chains remain fragile, and administrative demands continue to grow. Leaders are asked to stabilize organizations while navigating forces largely outside their control.

Those pressures inevitably reach the clinical floor.

In staff meetings, nurses hear familiar refrains: we need to be more efficient, we need to tighten workflows, we need to reduce waste. These requests are rarely made casually or without reason. They reflect real financial strain and genuine concern about sustainability.

But in high-acuity clinical settings—especially oncology—the question isn’t whether efficiency matters. It does.

The question is whether we are starting in the right place.

The Problem with starting at cost-cutting

Nurses are trained to define the problem before proposing solutions. In clinical care, jumping to treatment without understanding the diagnosis is unsafe. Yet in operational decision-making, the process is often reversed.

The implicit starting question becomes:

How do we cut costs?

Once that question is accepted, the solutions are predictable: tighter schedules, compressed staffing, reduced flexibility at the bedside. These approaches may lower expenses in the short term, but they rarely address the forces actually driving financial instability.

From the nursing perspective, […]

2026-01-16T15:00:23-05:00January 14th, 2026|nurse staffing, Nursing, patient safety, safe staffing|3 Comments
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The Ethical Use of our Therapeutic Connections with Patients’ Families

“What would you do, doctor?” The family had been explicit in wanting straightforward communication about their child, whose neurological disease had progressed to the point where she was continually seizing, despite every medication the physicians had tried. The seizures were in turn damaging her brain, such that she was minimally responsive to stimuli and was not expected to regain significant awareness of her surroundings.

I held my breath as I anticipated the doctor’s reply. She had spent many hours with this patient and family, and had built trust with the parents.

“As a physician . . . I would transition my child to comfort care and ultimately let her go. But as a mother . . . I would struggle to do this.”

The patient’s mom nodded tearfully. The doctor had given an honest reply, and had still ultimately left the choice to the parents.

I took care of this patient in her final few days of life. The parents were heartbroken but also clear in their decision. We walked them through each step, and made sure they felt supported to the best of our ability, down to their very last goodbye with their child.

******

There is power in the medication and therapies we apply. Fluid […]

2025-12-18T10:39:59-05:00December 18th, 2025|Ethics, family, family experience, narratives, nursing roles, nursing stories|1 Comment
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Some Gentle Reminders for Ensuring Appropriate Language Interpretation for Patients

Photo by Ling App on Unsplash

When I began nursing school, I never could have imagined how quickly I would be thrust into the heart of health care, quite literally. During my first semester, I started clinical rotations on a cardiovascular unit, where I began to understand the phenomenal intricacies of the human heart. It was a time of discovery, as I learned to navigate the complexities of blood pressure readings, mean arterial pressures (MAP), electrocardiograms (ECGs), cardiac catheterizations, and even the life-changing left ventricular assistive devices (LVADs).

By the time I began my second semester, I found myself in a cardiovascular surgical intermediate care unit, a place that would push me further into the depths of cardiac care. There, under the watchful eye of my clinical preceptor, I had the responsibility of caring for patients who had undergone some of the most intricate and high-stakes procedures imaginable. It was during this semester that I encountered a powerful lesson that has stayed with me long after graduation and well into my early years as a registered nurse.

A lesson in why clear communication really matters.

A Spanish-speaking Hispanic woman with coronary artery disease was admitted to our cardiac unit. Her electronic medical record noted […]

2025-08-11T14:15:43-04:00August 11th, 2025|family, family experience, Nursing, patient engagement, patient experience, patient safety|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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