What ‘Stronger Than Chemo’ Means

During a safety huddle, one of my colleagues, an oncology nurse and breast cancer survivor, spoke honestly about what cancer felt like to her. “Every day you’re scared. Is the treatment or the cancer going to kill me?” she said. “You think about it all the time.” Her words struck me because of how open and exposed they felt. There was nothing polished or inspirational about them. Just honesty.

woman looking at spacious landscapeFor oncology nurses, a day at work may feel like another clinic day, another infusion, another patient assignment. But patients walk into the same space carrying entirely different realities. Fear. Grief. Uncertainty. Hope. Devastating news. Relief. Sometimes all at once. Her words reminded me how important it is to respect that difference and remain mindful of it.

I remember entering a patient’s room smiling ear to ear. She asked me why I was so happy. Without thinking, I answered, “It’s a good day.” Looking back, that response feels insensitive. I later learned that earlier that day she had been told her cancer was metastatic. Shortly after I left the room, I heard her sobbing behind the curtain. That moment stayed with me because what felt like an ordinary good day to me was […]

2026-06-15T09:57:20-04:00June 15th, 2026|Nursing, nursing perspective, Oncology nursing, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment
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Beyond Environmental Services: Common Cleaning Gaps in Patient Care

During rounds in an outpatient clinic, I noticed staff cleaning vaginal ultrasound probes between patients with a quaternary ammonium disinfectant wipe (a low-level disinfectant appropriate for use on devices that come in contact with intact skin).

When I asked about the process, the staff explained that because the probe was covered with a probe cover, they assumed a disinfectant wipe was sufficient. While probe covers provide an important layer of protection, they can leak or develop microscopic perforations. Because contamination can still occur, these probes should always be treated as if they have contacted mucous membranes and require a high-level disinfectant (appropriate for use on devices that come in contact with mucous membranes or non-intact skin) instead of a low-level disinfectant.

Gaps in knowledge and execution.

This type of misunderstanding is not uncommon in health care and illustrates a broader challenge: cleaning failures are often not caused by lack of effort but by gaps in knowledge and execution. Despite longstanding guidance, inconsistencies in cleaning and disinfection practices continue to be cited during regulatory and accrediting surveys.

The Spaulding classification system.

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2026-06-15T09:46:46-04:00June 9th, 2026|infection control, Nursing, patient safety, Public health|0 Comments
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The Missing Decade: Nursing Informatics Can Shape the Future of Menopause Care

A fragmented documentation model and episodic care.

Perimenopause and menopause are not isolated events. They are dynamic physiologic transitions that can unfold over years, sometimes more than a decade, affecting sleep, cognition, mood, cardiovascular health, metabolic health, musculoskeletal function, sexual health, and overall quality of life. Midlife is not simply “the years before aging.” It is a critical window into healthy aging.

Yet most health care systems continue to function through episodic encounters and what has become the fragmented documentation model. A woman may discuss insomnia with one provider, anxiety with another, joint pain with an orthopedist, and irregular cycles with a gynecologist. Rarely are these experiences connected longitudinally across systems, specialties, or time.

The infrastructure reflects that fragmentation.

Many electronic health records (EHRs) still lack standardized structured fields for menopause stage, symptom burden, menstrual pattern changes, longitudinal symptom tracking, or patient-generated health data integration. Symptoms are often buried in free-text notes, inconsistently coded, or disconnected from meaningful clinical context. Even when women are telling us exactly what they are experiencing, our systems frequently lack the structure to interpret these lived experiences as computable longitudinal health data.

From a nursing informatics perspective, the signal is there. The systems simply are not built to see it.

The wider context.

By 2030, more than 1.2 billion women worldwide will […]

2026-06-03T10:27:58-04:00June 3rd, 2026|digital health, documentation, Nursing, nursing informatics, Patients, women's health|0 Comments
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From Care to Calling: How a Nurse’s Small Act Became a Lifelong Inspiration

Often, the simplest questions lead to the greatest moments of reflection and growth. While serving on a recent panel discussion, I was asked how I knew I wanted to be a nurse? The question offered me the opportunity to reflect on the butterfly effect of one nurse’s actions on the future of a teenage girl.

A mother’s sudden illness

I was 17 years old, a junior in high school, and growing increasingly excited about my first prom. The dress was picked out, the makeup decided, and my high school sweetheart (and current husband) had already asked me to be his date. Just prior to the big day, my mother began experiencing worsening headaches and increasingly noticeable vision changes. Though it was originally written off as stress or typical age-related vision changes, an eye appointment for a new prescription quickly led to a neurology consultation. With roughly 50% of my mother’s peripheral vision already gone, scans were ordered, and a craniopharyngioma was discovered.

Suddenly, prom was the last thing on my mind as my mother was admitted to a local cancer hospital for treatment of a large (noncancerous) brain tumor. Her surgery was scheduled for the day of the big dance. Her last words before being wheeled into surgery were, “When I wake up, the first thing I want to see are pictures of how beautiful you looked at the prom.”

2026-05-04T09:48:29-04:00April 2nd, 2026|career, family experience, Nursing, nursing career, Patients|0 Comments
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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 try to […]

2026-03-04T14:07:41-05:00March 4th, 2026|Nursing, Oncology nursing, patient experience, Patients|2 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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