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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