Oncology nurses bring hope and compassion to their work
Alicia Ortega remembers an occasion early in her nursing career when she arrived a few minutes late for work because her daughter had overslept. She was stressed. Her first patient of the day was a stage 4 metastatic breast cancer patient who could see the young nurse was feeling uptight.
“She told me, ‘Alicia, I see that you’re very nervous. Drop what you’re doing, and let me make a prayer for you,” Ortega recalls. “And I was like, ‘Why is this person who is about to die — because she passed away less than a week after that — praying for me when my problem is that I got here five minutes late?’ That was my huge problem versus her dealing with this deadly disease.”
That generosity and graciousness on the part of her patients was one of the things that drew Ortega to becoming an oncology nurse 12 years ago and what continues to motivate her today as director of the Cancer Institute at Pioneers.
Ortega is one of three oncology nurses on staff at the institute, compared to more than 230 nurses employed within the Pioneers network overall. They represent a small but dedicated fraternity of nursing specialists gifted with a rare calling that is being highlighted in May through Oncology Nursing Month.
“We have to be the strength of the patient,” said Julieta Armstrong, an oncology nurse who joined the Cancer Institute’s staff two years ago. “I believe that there’s a lot of fear involved with just the word cancer, and once a patient is educated on the way cancer works and the treatments that are available and the way that they’ll feel, it provides some sort of ease and comfort for them to know that we are going to treat this as much as we can, and we’re going to go full force.”
Indeed, one of the first challenges an oncology nurse faces, is helping patients cope with the trauma of the diagnosis.
“Most people still think being diagnosed with cancer means death,” observed Israel Samaniego, the third oncology nurse on the institute’s staff.
They also tend to think treatments such as chemotherapy are going to rob them of their quality of life. “It is a tough treatment. I mean it is very difficult,” Samaniego acknowledged. “But they think it’s something for which you’ll be bedbound during that period of time. I think that misconception comes from TV.”
Samaniego said patients are surprised to learn they can usually continue with their normal lives. “We have patients who continue to work. I mean there are those who can’t because of their type of job, but they can continue to be with their kids, to be with their grandchildren and to do their day to day,” he said.
While there is specialized training that goes with becoming certified as an oncology nurse, that’s not what makes the job so exclusive. Not everyone is cut out to work in a profession that requires accepting some conditions can’t be corrected but only managed to an inevitable end.
“We are very clear when we interview staff members for any position that this is not always happy place,” Ortega said. “It’s not for everybody. It requires very special skill and personality to be able to work here.”
Oncology nurses usually see patients often enough to form attachments. “You see these patients on a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis, depending on their treatment,” Samaniego said. “They become friends, and that’s the difficult part, especially in those sad cases where unfortunately it is a stage four type cancer and the life expectancy isn’t too great.”
On the other hand, there are many times when the story ends well. “Not everybody’s a stage 4 cancer patient,” Samaniego said. “So you have those patients who you are going to help, and you’re going to see them out on the street, and they’re well. They’re past cancer, past that stage in their life.”
Armstrong said what makes working in oncology different from other specialties goes beyond licensing and training. “It is the personality of the nurse and the compassion,” she said. “You have to be strong enough to be comfortable with your own feelings and be optimistic not only for yourself but for the patient, They’re here looking for hope, and we provide that to them.”