May 28, 2008

LDI: A Catalyst for Fellow to Look for Opportunities to Effect Positive Change

Ann M. Smith, RN, OCN^®, LDI Class of 1998–1999

Leadership is not about a title, a position, or a budget. It’s a process of stepping forward and bringing out the best in others—providing tools for them to accomplish achievable goals. The ONS leaders who created LDI provided the tools, the mentoring, and the modeling to help me to accomplish my goals. The skills and strategies I learned formed the foundation for my professional and personal leadership growth over the last eight years. I have served as a leader in a variety of settings.

My aspiration to manage an education department came to fruition in 2002. I now manage an education team of six at an ambulatory care company. I served as president of my local ONS chapter from 2001-2002, and on three national ONS project teams: LDI faculty member, 1999-2000; team member, ONS Multicultural Tool Kit, 2001; and team leader, ONS Job Shadowing/Mentoring Program Tool Kit for Successful Outcomes, 2002. I continue to serve as the only oncology nurse on the board of my local American Cancer Society (ACS) chapter. I serve on the advisory boards at four community colleges’ nursing and technical schools, and I was elected president of the Central Florida Health Educators Association in 2005.
 
Although I am very proud of these elected and appointed positions, my story is about leadership in volunteering. Through networking with a fellow ACS volunteer, the local patient service representative, we identified the need to educate the clinical and office staff of my company’s primary care physicians about ACS and the Patient Services Division. As an oncology nurse, I wanted to personally excite and inspire the office staff about the importance of identifying the needs of and community resources for patients with cancer. Office nursing is so much more than “rooming a patient.” It is all about serving as the facilitator of the continuum of care across all care stages.

Others will follow a leader if you do what you say you will do. I shared my passion for the care of patients with cancer, and the staff responded. I chaired the company team for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer with a good response. I think this is what encouraging the heart is all about.

LDI was a catalyst for me to look for opportunities to effect positive change in myself and to be a part of the new nursing leadership to participate in the transformation of cancer care through practical approaches. I feel I have grown and developed as a nurse leader and serve as a positive role model for future generations of oncology nurses.

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Note. From Oncology Nursing Society/ONS Foundation Leadership Development Institute: A Decade of Success Stories. Read the full version, as well as accounts from other participants, here.

Fellow Models the Way and Inspires the Vision of a Breast Care Support Network for Nurses

Elaine Sein, RN, BSN, OCN^®, LDI Class of 2003–2004

Oncology nursing has been my profession and my passion for more than 30 years. Each step along my journey has given me a better understanding of myself, my values, my patients’ needs, and my goals for life. I feel that LDI was the icing on the cake of a very fulfilling nursing career.

I chose oncology nursing because I lost my mother to breast cancer and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of other women and their families who had to deal with this disease. One year into my oncology nursing career, I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 22. With God’s grace and excellent medical care, I have had 32 years to be an advocate and educator in breast diseases. As a young cancer survivor in the late ‘70s, I incorporated the role of breast care coordinator into the position I held as a discharge planner/case manager.

A few years ago, I moved into a new position as a consultant to our community hospital partners in the Fox Chase Cancer Center Network (FCN). Through my contacts with the various community programs, I realized a need for a support network for the nurses serving as nurse coordinators for breast care.

As an ONS LDI fellow, I decided the next step in my career would be to use my knowledge base, experience, and leadership skills to model the way and inspire a shared vision by developing the role of the breast care coordinator in the community setting and mentor these nurses with quarterly educational, clinical, and operations updates. Since this is an area of oncology nursing that is evolving—with the influx of hospital-based breast programs and free standing breast centers—I envisioned this group becoming a regional resource for other nurses starting programs and possibly spearheading an ONS Breast Care SIG.

I have always believed oncology nurses were a special breed, and my relationship with my new colleagues confirms this. We achieved our goal of becoming actively involved in the ONS Breast Cancer Focus Group as it moved to SIG status. Darcy Burbage (SIG coordinator) is a member of FCN Breast Care Coordinator Group, as is Meg Levinson (co-editor of the SIG newsletter). Since another project we would like to investigate is possible credentialing as a breast care coordinator through ONS, I have agreed to chair a special project team to look into feasibility of a certification process.

As you can see, my LDI project has become a reality because of the shared vision and passion for patients with breast cancer that my colleagues share with me. My hope it that my project will not have an endpoint but move onto new and bigger challenges as we strive to provide comprehensive holistic care to patients with breast cancer by the most qualified nurses in a variety of settings. I would like to personally thank all the FCN Breast Care Coordinators for their part in making this new venture such a success and pleasure.

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Note. From Oncology Nursing Society/ONS Foundation Leadership Development Institute: A Decade of Success Stories. Read the full version, as well as accounts from other participants, here.

May 16, 2008

LDI: A Powerful Compass for the Leadership Path

Eva Gallagher, RN, AOCN^®, MS, Inaugural LDI Class of 1998-1999

The ONS Leadership Development Institute (LDI) was a life-changing event for me. I had been working in oncology for 10 years at that time and had thoroughly enjoyed the various patient-care roles in which I worked. However, I was starting to ask myself, “What next?” I was considering what I could do to have a greater impact on the care of people with cancer. I knew that I had an effect on individual lives as I cared for patients every day, but I had a strong desire to have a more global impact. I felt that I was at a fork in the road and did not know which way to go. LDI put my options in perspective and helped me find my way down the road. As my compass on this journey, the content learned at LDI has kept me on the right path to accomplishing my goals.

There were three key benefits from LDI. The first benefit was the comprehensive content of the program. Over the course of a few days, attendees had the opportunity to hear presentations from leaders in nursing and other disciplines. The second benefit was the mentorship component. Being assigned a mentor and working with that mentor throughout the year to complete my project and the program was a powerful way to reinforce and operationalize the content presented at the first meeting. The third benefit was the peer network it created. As a member of the first LDI class, I had the opportunity to meet peers from across the country who had similar interests and were on a similar path.

Inspired by the program, I made many changes in my professional life. Some of these changes included the following.

• I became active in ONS at the national level by serving as a director on the board.
• I became the government relations liaison for my local Metro Minnesota ONS chapter.
• I changed jobs and became a medical science liaison, where I help to set up oncology clinical trials in a 10-state area.
• I started in a PhD program in nursing.

Entering a PhD program last fall was the continuation of the journey I began at  LDI. LDI gave me the confidence to pursue this option and set me up with a network of people who also had chosen this path. I decided to pursue a PhD in nursing with a minor in epidemiology, as it seemed to best fit my interests and needs. I have almost one year of studies under my belt and continue to draw from the lessons learned from LDI. When I complete this program I hope to be able to continue to pursue my research interests to ultimately improve the care of people with cancer.

LDI made a difference. It is a unique opportunity and is well worth the investment. The return has been exponential.

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Note. From Oncology Nursing Society/ONS Foundation Leadership Development Institute: A Decade of Success Stories. Read the full version, as well as accounts from other participants, here.

May 9, 2008

Fellow Commits to Action, Not Misery

Terry Anders, RN, BSN, OCN^®, LDI Class of 2005-2006

Frustrated, no stimulation, no challenges, not appreciated—I never thought I would use these words to describe my nursing career. However, there I was, miserable in the career that I worked so hard to establish. Not because the patients, my coworkers, or the physicians were an issue; in fact, those were the very reasons that kept me coming back.

My feelings of misery were attributed to the lack of opportunity for professional advancement, lack of education and training, complete disregard for safe handling practices, and what I perceived as a lack of management respect for “the job” I did. Rather than believe others could be feeling this same way, I opted to “personalize it” and make it all mine.

Finally, at the end of my rope, I confided in a coworker how I was feeling. Much to my surprise, she understood exactly how I felt, and, in fact, “had been there” the previous year. She explained to me that she had applied to the ONS Leadership Development Institute (LDI), was accepted, and spent the past year working on her project, which was developing a clinical ladder for the nurses. She encouraged me to apply for the program and determine a project topic that would stimulate and challenge me. That is exactly what I did.

My project, “Proper Handling of Hazardous Drugs in the Outpatient Setting,” gave me the opportunity to put on paper how to provide staff with education and training to properly handle hazardous drugs, establish annual safety training and competency reviews, implement a medical surveillance program, and adhere to the OSHA directive requiring annual training. This project was accepted.

I went to my LDI weekend and came back to Columbus ready to change the world in which I work. Professionally, I went from being miserable with my stagnated career to accepting a newly created position—clinical educator—and the challenges that came with it. I have become actively involved in my local ONS chapter and its education committee.

If someone would have told me last year at this time that I’d be with the same employer and in a new position, I wouldn’t have believed it. Today, I’m the poster child for an LDI success story. I took an issue that I was passionate about, developed a plan to resolve it, brought it to the managers’ attention, acknowledged staff ambivalence to change, promoted staff involvement, and volunteered to put my plan into action. 
 
In an effort to “pay it forward,” I have spoken to a nurse in the practice about LDI. I conveyed the importance of taking the issue and then identifying the problems and ways to reach resolution instead of letting the issue snowball into a big negative obstacle in her nursing career. She is applying to LDI this year.

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Note. From Oncology Nursing Society/ONS Foundation Leadership Development Institute: A Decade of Success Stories. Read the full version, as well as accounts from other participants, here.

May 1, 2008

Note. In honor of Oncology Nursing Month, RE: Connect is featuring the following personal essay about what one ONS member feels it means to be an oncology nurse. Check back on May 8 for RE: Connect entries about the ONS Leadership Development Institute, ONS Connect’s theme for May.

Oncology Nursing:  Why Do I Stay?

Cindy Mauldin, RN, OCN^®, Staff Nurse III in the Home Care Network at Jefferson Health System, Wayne, PA

People ask me all the time, “How could you be a cancer nurse for so long? Don’t you get depressed?”

I smile and say, “I get sad, but my patients are such special people that they give me a lot more than I give them.”

Oncology is so fulfilling for me, that I can honestly say that I do not want to do any other type of nursing. I fell into oncology as a specialty by chance. When I got married, my husband was in school in Dallas, TX, and I joined him there. I went to work at one of the local hospitals, and my choices were a respiratory floor, a plastic surgery floor, and an oncology unit. Not a wide selection, so I thought I would try oncology and have never left. That was 29 years ago. I guess you could say I liked it.

My experiences have been varied. I have worked on a clinical research unit doing clinical trials and bone marrow transplantations. I have worked in inpatient units and an outpatient setting where we administered chemotherapy and transfusions to an average of 60–70 patients a day. I have now been in home care as an oncology case manager for 14 years and feel perhaps this has been my greatest chance to really make a difference in my patients’ lives.

Treatments and side effect management are so much better than they were when I first started in 1979. Being able to spend the extra time I can with patients makes all the difference in the world. I can do the teaching that I love to do and hopefully empower them to take back some of the control that this devastating disease manages to take away from them. I try to encourage them to be as healthy as they can within the restraints of their disease and its treatment. I feel I do make a difference in their lives and if I can help the journey be even a little easier then I have done what I feel God is calling me to do.

Yes, I do feel that this is my calling and perhaps that is why, when people shake their heads when I say I am an oncology nurse for all these years, all I do is smile. And think of all the precious people through the years that I have walked with on their journey with cancer.

The memories are life changing, sustaining, and totally fulfilling. I would choose nothing else.

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