"It started out by doing a kind of a white paper that we called Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care. Ellen Stovall, our CEO [of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship] at the time, gave this report to Dr. Richard Klausner, who was the head of National Cancer Institute at the time. He called Ellen immediately and said, 'Why are we not doing something about this?' Within one year, we had the Office of Cancer Survivorship at NCI," ONS member Susan Leigh, BSN, RN, told ONS member Ruth Van Gerpen, MS, RN-BC, APRN-CNS, AOCNS^®, PMGT-BC, member of the ONS 50th anniversary committee, during a conversation about her involvement in cancer survivorship advocacy. Van Gerpen also spoke with ONS members Deborah Mayer, PhD, RN, AOCN^®, FAAN, and Timiya S. Nolan, PhD, APRN-CNP, ANP-BC, about the history and future of cancer survivorship.

Music Credit: "Fireflies and Stardust" by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 

Episode Notes 

• This episode is not eligible for NCPD.
• ONS Podcast™ episodes:
• Episode 201: Which Survivorship Care Model Is Right for Your Patient?
• Episode 91: The Seasons of Survivorship
• Episode 49: The Cancer Survivorship Conundrum
• ONS Voice article: Our Unified Voices Can Improve Cancer Survivorship Care
• ONS book: Oncology Nurse Navigation: Delivering Patient-Centered Care Across the Continuum (third edition)
• ONS course: Essentials in Survivorship Care for the Advanced Practice Provider
• Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing articles:
• Incorporating Nurse Navigation to Improve Cancer Survivorship Care Plan Delivery
• Survivorship Care: More Than Checking a Box
• The Missing Piece of Survivorship: Cancer Prevention
• Oncology Nursing Forum articles:
• Patient Perceptions of Survivorship Care Plans: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation
• Survivorship Care Plans: Health Actions Taken and Satisfaction After Use
• ONS Survivorship Learning Library
• Rehabilitation of People With Cancer: Position Statement from the Association of Rehabilitation Nurses (ARN) and endorsed by the Oncology Nursing Society
• Connie Henke Yarbro Oncology Nursing History Center
• American Cancer Society
• Survivorship resources
• Cancer Survivors Network
• Cancer Nation (formerly National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship)
• Cancer Survival Toolbox
• Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care: Access, Advocacy, Action, and Accountability (white paper)
• National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation
• New England Journal of Medicine article: Seasons of Survival: Reflections of a Physician With Cancer by Fitzhugh Mullan

To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.

To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email pubONSVoice@ons.org.

Highlights From This Episode

Leigh: "Another way that [National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship] got very involved with looking at how we keep this information coming and how we really share care with our outside physicians is the development of survivorship care plans. And then we also hoped that we would see more survivorship clinics by now. But between trying to get people to develop care plans and clinics, it's been like pulling teeth. It has been very difficult. And a lot of this struggle to get this going has been, first of all, there isn't enough money to do this. There isn't enough time for immediate staff to take these on, and we just don't have enough staff as it is now. And survivorship is not a moneymaker, so it's just something that has to be done kind of on the side." TS 11:54

Mayer: "When I became ONS president in the '80s—I was the fourth ONS president—we were given a cancer grant to do something with our presidency. And that was when I really wanted to bring attention to rehabilitation as a means to address cancer survivorship issues because we had a very 'treat 'em and street 'em' attitude. We gave you your treatment, and we sent you home, and you had to figure out the rest. And there wasn't a lot of knowledge or support to help you put your life back together again afterwards. And so in tha