Episode 328: Supportive Roles in Oncology Units Improve Staffing and Patient Care
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“Supportive personnel have a great ability to connect with patients and peers, and if that’s utilized effectively, it will make a great, great, great, great place to work, with great people to work with, because utilizing the supportive personnel and the great connections that they have, assistive personnel are kind of a lot of times the middle piece, and we don’t utilize it in that way,” Danielle Steele Anderson, CST II, NA II, research assistant at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, NC, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a conversation about how supportive personnel are improving staffing and patient care in oncology units.

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 courses.ons.org) by September 6, 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 nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Learning outcome: Learners will report an increase in knowledge related to the role of supportive staff in the care of people with cancer.

Episode Notes 

• Complete this evaluation for free NCPD). 
• Oncology Nursing Podcast™ episode: Episode 160: Build Innovative Staff Education Tools and Resources)
• ONS Voice article: Upskilled Medical Assistants Can Improve Quality and Efficiency of Cancer Care)
• ONS book: Oncology Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice)
• ONS Learning Library: Staffing)
• 2023 ONS Congress poster presentation: Building a Staffing Plan for the Future)
• Anderson’s ONS Congress® poster presentation: The Development of an Assistive Personnel Role to Support Quality Initiative Compliance and Improve Patient Outcomes on an Inpatient Hematology/Oncology Unit)
• National Guidelines for Nursing Delegation)

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

To find resources for creating an Oncology Nursing Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library).

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [email protected]).

Highlights From This Episode

“I worked on a 53-bed oncology unit that had limited staff and resources to complete audits on things like central lines, Foleys, tubings, turn compliance, falls—different things like that. Our nurses were dealing with high patient acuity and task overload, so one of our amazing CN4s came up with this awesome rule as a cost-effective way to perform and sustain quality improvements on our unit.” TS 3:15 

“Even before this role, I never thought about being on a committee. I never even knew that assistive personnel could even be on committees. I thought committees were tailored more toward nursing. But being in this committee, I feel like involving assistive personnel in committees, can number one, empower them and boost their morale, which in turn, can have higher job satisfaction, good retention.” TS 11:42

“Encouraging assistive personnel and participating in continuing education programs that may be offered to learn more about oncology-specific care, teaching clinical skills that may be within the scope of practice. With this position, I am able to do a lot of tasks that are beneficial to both our nurses and assistive personnel.” TS 16:08 

“Opportunities to shadow with nurses during procedures can kind of give us that hands-on learning experience to know more about specific things that are going on and what to monitor with patients. And then also it just will help build connections within our healthcare team and your workplace and your unit.” TS 16:59