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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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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The Pitfalls of Being the ‘Nice’ Patient: A Nurse’s Perspective

Image Brent Keane/via Pexels

I have often heard health care professionals in various environments say, “If you’re nice to the nurses and doctors who take care of you, you’ll get better care.” As a bedside nurse myself, I understand the sentiment. No busy health care worker loves being met with antagonism or pressing demands that don’t strike us as critically urgent.

But when my husband and I both became patients with serious illnesses last year, we learned the clinical pitfalls of being the nice patients. I am left wondering how patients should be expected or permitted to advocate for their own care without worrying that they will be frowned upon or brushed off because they’re perceived as “difficult.”

First cautionary tale.

In early 2022, I discovered a small lump under my right breast that I initially wrote off as a cyst. Surely, I told myself, as a woman in her mid-40s with no risk factors for breast cancer, this had to be benign. A screening mammogram in May 2022 gave me an all-clear, and I went on my way.

But by November, I knew the lump had grown. I reached out to my PCP to ask for a diagnostic mammogram, and he emailed back a casual reassurance. “I know you’re worried, but […]

2024-02-07T16:57:09-05:00February 6th, 2024|Nursing, nursing stories, patient experience, Patients|15 Comments
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The Healing Power of Animals: Reducing Stress in Patients and Nursing Students

Nursing students are known to have high stress levels during their nursing programs. While many researchers have explored different coping mechanisms to help nursing students cope with their stress and anxiety, not many have looked at animal interventions.

I am a huge fan of animal interventions after seeing their positive effects on patients (and staff) while I was working bedside in the hospital. Frustrated or anxious patients would usually become more accepting of care after a visit from an animal. Scared and lonely patients who were shutting down became more vibrant and open. Visitors and staff also benefitted from the visits. There were many times that as the therapy animal came down the hallway to a patient room, staff members stopped and took a moment to relax with the animal in a way that clearly refreshed them.

Becoming a therapy animal handler.

Seeing the effects of therapy animals in the hospital inspired me to pursue being a therapy animal handler myself. The hospital where I work had rabbits as part of their therapy animal program. This was a small enough animal for me to handle and care for. I picked out my first two, and I was hooked from the get-go.

The rabbits are very interactive—I like to say they are nosy. […]

2023-09-18T11:45:53-04:00September 18th, 2023|Nursing, nursing students, patient experience|0 Comments
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Unseen Struggles: When the Pain of Chronic Illness Meets Disbelief

A friend’s desperation.

Photo by Ben Blennerhassett on Unsplash

It was early in the morning when I received a call from my best friend, who was crying and
distraught. She frantically rattled off her symptoms: “My stomach is on fire, I can’t sleep, nothing is relieving the discomfort, and I’m in excruciating pain.” Although she’d been feeling discomfort for the previous two weeks, at first she’d thought the intensity of her current symptoms might be from food poisoning. Given her not always healthy diet, which she and I had discussed in the past, I too at first thought she might have eaten something that set the symptoms off.

“It hurts so badly I don’t think I can take it anymore,” she told me over the phone. “I can’t stop going to the bathroom.”

She said that despite the severity of her pain, her family just thought she was being dramatic. I could sense her desperation as she sobbed over the phone. Even though she did not want to seek medical attention, I begged her to go to the nearest clinic or hospital and told her I’d meet her there.

Crohn’s disease: When nurses doubt a patient’s pain.

In the emergency department (ED) where she […]

2023-09-07T11:14:39-04:00September 7th, 2023|Nursing, nursing perspective, pain management, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment
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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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