August 2020

While most health care providers and medical practitioners are aware of the significant limitations HIPAA places on their activities, they are less clear how to react when it’s the patient who wants to record the physician, which could potentially expose protected health information of other patients.

For many oncology nurses, caring for patients with cancer is the driving force inspiring them to come in to work, day after day. But issues with hospital or clinic administration plus the global coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic are causing health care professionals to experience burnout or compassion fatigue.

Many nurses are apprehensive about continuing their schooling because of the cost. But programs do exist to reduce the financial burden.

A job in oncology nursing is both stressful and rewarding—whether you have been working in the profession for 10 days or 10 years. We recently asked our readers and cancer survivors what advice they would give to new oncology nurses. What follows is just some of the advice shared.

If nurses fail to address these issues or nurses’ leaders fail to coach and support, we may witness a mass exodus from nursing.

Burnout is no new phenomenon in the world of oncology nursing, but the recent COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these feelings. Thankfully, nurses are creating ways to help.