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Episode 301: Radiation Oncology: Side Effect and Care Coordination Best Practices

“Social work was involved because we could be radiation gung-ho, ready to go; chemo can be ready, but whoops, this patient doesn’t have a ride. It can be little things like that, you know, where we kind of forget. That’s why you need kind of a multidisciplinary approach. If it’s not your social worker, your navigator is going to know more and be like, ‘This patient needs a ride. I’m working on gas cards.’ Something like that can also halt a patient starting [treatment],” ONS member John Hollman, RN, BSN, OCN®, senior nurse manager of radiation oncology at AdventHealth Cancer Institute in Orlando, FL, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about care coordination between radiation oncology and other oncology subspecialties.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod 

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 

Earn 0.5 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at myoutcomes.ons.org by March 1, 2026. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. 

Learners will report an increase in knowledge related to coordination of care to assist with the management of radiation-related side effects.

Episode Notes

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

“Skin reaction is a big thing in our field for breast cancer. Managing it with lotions, creams, and stuff like that is temporary. To something more complicated, like the head and neck cancer patients with base of the tongue, where the beam is directed straight at that area of the body, which is very delicate, as we know, very, very, very tough treatment. You know, anything from esophagitis to dysphagia, dry mouth, no taste. Salivary glands are affected. So it really kind of depends, obviously, where we aim the machine.” TS 2:04

“I think it really determines on how that radiation nurse knows how radiation affects the cells that we treat. So, for instance, I always tell my patients when I’m educating them for head and neck, and I know they’re going to be getting concurrent cisplatin or something like that once a week, I’m going to tell them, like, ‘The majority of your acute side effects are us. Like, the chemo is going to work as a sensitizer. You’re going to have fluids that you’re going to be needing, but the difficulty swallowing, you know, all that stuff is our fault.’” TS 6:12

“If your med-onc is not affiliated with your rad-onc site, that can be a horrible barrier to try to break through because you don’t know anybody in that office. You identify yourself on the phone as someone from a competing company. . . . But it’s just breaking through that, and it just takes that nurse’s initiative and, hopefully, physician coordination as well, to work on, rad-onc between med-onc and getting that to kind of facilitate that.” TS 11:29

“Social work was involved because we could be radiation gung-ho, ready to go; chemo can be ready, but whoops, this patient doesn’t have a ride. It can be little things like that, you know, where we kind of forget. That’s why you need kind of a multidisciplinary approach. If it’s not your social worker, your navigator is going to know more and be like, ‘This patient needs a ride. I’m working on gas cards.’ Something like that can also halt a patient starting treatment.” TS 20:52

“I love the ONS radiation Communities. We do a lot of idea sharing on Communities. A rad-onc nurse from New York can post something like, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing for this side effect? We’re not having any luck with this.’ And you get some buy-in. And as long as the nurses remember evidence-based practice is always key. You know, just because you use one lotion, it doesn't mean, it’s going to be good for everybody. I like to see the evidence behind it.” TS 22:42

“With the ever-evolving radiopharms that are coming out, you know, that we’re doing here, too, it’s turning more into nurses are actually giving the treatment. And that’s what I’m speaking on in Congress, is a nurse’s evolving role in radiation and radiopharms especially. It’s a huge breakthrough. It’s the future pretty much.” TS 24:19

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