Nurse Leaders & Program DevelopmentCommunique
Coordinator Message
Things do not happen. Things are made to happen....John F. Kennedy
Greetings to our SIG members. We have had a busy spring and summer is quickly approaching. We hope that many of you were able to join us in Orlando for the 40th annual ONS Congress and the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the National ONS. We appreciate your attendance at our SIG meeting and the “Leadership Survival Skills” presentation. We had a wonderful turnout and I hope if you made it you enjoyed the presentation. Many asked and the presentation will be downloaded soon to our virtual community website in the “Resources” tab under “SIG member presentations”. Hope you can join us in San Antonio for the ONS 41st Annual CongressApril 28–May 1, 2016 ● It’s never too early to start planning!
We had previously mentioned that some changes were coming to all SIGs and it was briefly discussed at Congress. In summary the requirements for maintaining a SIG have been loosened and during the 2015 SIG Leadership workshop in July, the SIG leaders will continue to build plans to meet the needs of ONS members. The focus of the SIGs will continue to be connecting to members with similar interests, answering questions, solving problems, and teaching others. I do plan to attend the Leadership Workshop in July and will report back to you after that.
On another note, Eva Edwards RN, OCN, MSN, the Regional Director of Oncology Nursing at Oregon Providence Health & Sciences has joined us with plans to assist with the virtual community and will be looking at getting us up on Facebook. Please welcome her!
Hope that you all celebrated Oncology Nursing Month and you received the recognition so highly deserved for your incredible skills, knowledge, passion and commitment to providing exceptional care to your patients and families. Thank you!
Thelma Baker RN, MSN, OCN
Name Updated from Management & Program Development SIG to Nurse Leaders & Program Development (MGT) SIG.
By Angela Adjetey-Appiah MSN, MPH, MA, RN, FAACMThelma Baker RN, MSN, OCN
ONS recognizes oncology nurses’ need to identify themselves as leaders and to develop the skills they would need to become strong leaders to support Oncology Nursing within ONS, at their institutions, in their communities, and within the nursing profession.
This has been achieved in past programs such as ONS Leadership Development Institute. As the SIG that represents oncology leaders and program developments, our annual congress SIG meeting this year concentrated on how we can impact the need to promote, educate, and empower oncology nurses who are considered emerging/aspiring leaders i.e., staff nurses, charge nurses, and nurse coordinators who aspire to nursing leadership roles to join the SIG. Ourstaff nurses, clinical nurse managers, case managers, clinical leads, and charge nurses, will benefit from joining nurse managers, executive directors, and so on by reading and nurturing their leadership curiosities through SIG involvement.
Changing our name might seem to be a small task, however, as a SIG, it is our stand to continue to impact oncology nursing leadership. Thelma and I have made a commitment to lead this initiative of tackling the concerns that we encounter as nurse leaders. We hope by inspiring our emerging nurse leaders and all mentioned above to join the SIG, we can work together to achieve great things and impact patient care as oncology nurse leaders, as well as have an opportunity to mentor and educate our future nurse leaders.
Other initiatives we will be strengthening going forward, is our relationship with other nurse leaders’ organizations through collaboration and opportunities to bring leadership educational opportunities to the SIG members. We aim to improve ONS goals for leadership development: To prepare oncology nurses to lead the transformation of cancer care. To promote oncology nursing leadership in all settings. To sustain and enhance the vitality of ONS.
To find out more about our strategic plan, please visit the virtual community:
If you have any ideas on how we can enhance SIG activities, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at or to Thelma .
Call for Recognition:
Inour December issue of our newsletter, we would like to recognize charge nurse & emerging nurse leaders. Kindly send me story of an individual you would like recognized and why you are recognizing them.
Looking forward to receiving them.
Thank you,
Angela Adjetey-Appiah:
Welcome New Members:
The Nurse Leaders and Program Development SIG Welcomes New Members
The leadership of the Nurse Leaders and Program Development SIG would like to welcome and support a new group of members. If you see any of these nurses at a local chapter meeting or conference, let them know that you are also a member and that the SIG is very happy that they chose us. Please let us know how this SIG can serve you. Thank you for joining.
Name / City StateIkramAbdulmalik / Wylie, TX
Heather Augustyniak / Oswego, IL
Kelly Crouch / Lakeland, FL
Esmeralda Da Costa / Newark, NJ
Alex Allan Dumlao / Emeryville, CA
Anna Feldman / Troy, NY
Kathryn Hallman / Pickens, SC
Judith Holloway / Katy, TX
Barbara Knollinger / Valley Grove, WV
CourtneeKottwitz / Memphis, MO
Amber Long / Cedar Hill, TX
Laura Longo / Staten Island, NY
Colleen Peyerl / Redwood Falls, MN
Linda Pillow / Lake Worth, FL
Diego Rodriguez / New York, NY
Ha Sin / Oakland, CA
Connie Wittman / Kearney, NE
Diamond Zuchlinski / New York, NY
Welcome New Co-Editor:
Happy Spring! My name is Kristen Fanti and I’m the new Co-Editor of the Nurse Leaders& Program Development (MGT) SIG, working alongside Angela Adjetey-Appiah, our Editor. In 2007 I started as a staff nurse on the inpatient oncology unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in NYC. In 2011 I took on the role of Patient Care Director of the same unit, a role I have held since. I love working in oncology and collaborating with others to improve and advance the care we provide our patients. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the Annual Congress in Orlando, FL this year, but I heard from some colleagues that it was a great experience and I hope any of you who attended had a great time!
I want to take this opportunity to pose a topic that has been coming up a lot for me lately: how do we retain advance practice oncology nurses at the bedside? Like many of my colleagues, I have a staff that ranges in seniority from 30 years on the unit to 6 months. Since starting in my role as Patient Care Director, I’ve noticed that the trend seems to be for new nurses to jump back into a graduate program soon after starting as a nurse on the unit. I want to support these novice nurses in their educational endeavors, but in the back of my mind is the thought that they are going to move on to Nurse Practitioner positions as soon as they graduate a few years later. I want to retain these nurses after they graduate. One thing that we are piloting on our Oncology inpatient units is a position we call the “Chemotherapy Resource RN.” This individual is someone who has his/her OCN certification, an interest and/or graduate degree in nursing education, and those nurses who are in NP programs. The Chemotherapy Resource RN is responsible for staff education regarding chemotherapy regimens, validation that chemotherapy is being administered safely and as per policy, and education regarding other policies and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality and the patient experience. The goal is for these staff members to broaden their experience, keep them engaged, and ultimately enhance patient care. Staff members who have participated in this pilot program have enjoyed the opportunity to do something different, yet still work clinically at the bedside. I want to open this topic up to the group and ask anyone who has any suggestions and/or best practices on using Advanced Practice Nurses as clinical bedside nurses to submit them to us.
Thank you for your tireless work as oncology nurses and nurse leaders! Hope you have a wonderful spring and summer with friends and family!
If you have any ideas for an article on the above topics or others, please email Angela Adjetey-Appiah at or myself at .
Kristen Fanti, MPA, RN, BSN, OCN®New York, NY
From nurse managers strategies
Retain staff by breaking these 20 bad habits
Peter Druker, often called the Father of Modern Management, made the following observation, “We spend a lot of time teaching managers what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching them what to stop. Half the leaders I’ve met don’t need to learn what to do–they need to learn what to stop.” We simply need to adjust our perspective.
Keeping that in mind, an executive coach named Marshall Goldsmith wrote a book in 2007 called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: 20 Workplace Habits You Need To Break. I recommend this book for your reading list! It’s a chapter by chapter in-depth look at each of the 20 habits we should get rid of as we advance in workplace leadership. Goldsmith offers numerous stories from his own career and his executive coaching experiences to illustrate each habit and keep the content “moving along.”
Here’s the list of 20 habits. Interestingly, they’re not reflective of a flaw in managerial skills. Nor do these habits reflect a shortcoming in intelligence or a personality flaw. All of them are indicative of challenges in interpersonal behavior. It may take reading the book’s descriptions to gain the right perspective and apply it to your own leadership skill mix, but here they are for your consideration:
1.Winning too much
2.Adding too much value
3.Passing judgment
4.Making destructive comments
5.Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”
6.Telling the world how smart we are
7.Speaking when angry
8.“Let me explain why that won’t work…”
9.Withholding information
10.Failing to give proper recognition
11.Claiming credit we don’t deserve
12.Making excuses
13.Clinging to the past
14.Playing favorites
15.Refusing to express regret
16.Not listening
17.Failing to express gratitude
18.Punishing the messenger
19.Passing the buck
20.An excessive need to be “me”
Goldsmith, M. (2007). What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: 20 Workplace Habits You Need To Break. Hyperion: NYC.
Originally posted by Bonnie Clair, MSN, RN.
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Retrieved June 4, 2015 from
Retrieved by: Angela Adjetey-Appiah