Oncology nurses may experience intense physical and emotional exhaustion, identified in the literature as symptoms of cumulative grief and compassion fatigue, with significant consequences for both nurses and organizations. The first step in preventing these consequences is recognition. Organizations should provide nurses with resources including education, counseling, and opportunities to grieve. Nurses need to learn the importance of work-life balance, self-care strategies, and communication skills. Using recommendations from the literature, an educational intervention was designed with the purpose of providing nurses with knowledge, skills, and resources to practice effective self-care and recognize when assistance is needed. The program's objective was to help nurses develop the coping skills and inner resources necessary to maintain their emotional and physical health.

Until recently, the authors' facility used a gravity-flow administration set for blood transfusions. This precluded using peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) for transfusions. A peripheral catheter was placed in these patients when transfusions were required. The goal of this project was to demonstrate that administration of blood products with an infusion pump is safe, timesaving, and cost-effective for patients with all types of vascular access devices. A total of 169 blood products were transfused. Use of the infusion pump showed no PICC failure, resulted in shorter transfusion times, and was cost-effective.

Nurses working in the outpatient ambulatory setting treat patients with multiple infusion drug regimens. Patients can have allergic reactions to infusions ranging from very mild to life-threatening. The reaction and the subsequent treatment measures can be very disconcerting to the patients and to the visitors in the infusion area. The nursing team described in this article took a proactive approach to minimize infusion reactions in the authors' facility, thereby ensuring the safety of other patients. Staff members examined the performance improvement data, conducted a retrospective study, and collaborated with the primary physician providers to develop rechallenge protocols for patients receiving paclitaxel and carboplatin regimens.