AOSW Connections

As I start this year as AOSW president, I want to acknowledge the vision and hard work of two people who came before me. Past-president Krista Nelson brought leadership that moved the organization through to a new level of professionalism and development of collaborations within many professional oncology communities. And our current past-president, Iris Fineberg, whose clear vision and dedication continued to help us develop as an organization that provides guidance and leadership in the current healthcare arena. It is on the shoulders of these two incredible people, and the current AOSW Board, that I stand and am able to see the many incredible initiatives that are going on in our organization.

Greetings everyone, from the Puget Sound Oncology Social Work Network, your local planning committee! We are delighted to welcome you to Seattle for AOSW’s 31st Annual Conference, “Leading With Skill and Passion: Oncology Social Workers at the Forefront of Cancer Care,” May 20-22.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate colleagues, peers, mentors, students and friends to receive awards and conference scholarships. This year’s process was robust and reflected the dedication and remarkable work being done by so many of our members.
 

I’d like to introduce myself to the membership as the new Research Director for AOSW, and to begin a dialogue with you on the role of research in oncology social work.

The benefits of smoking cessation are well-known to those in the healthcare field and perhaps especially to those who work with patients with cancer. In my role as a social worker focusing on patients with lung cancer, my patients constantly remind me of the smoking/lung cancer link. Patients’ (mostly spontaneous) reports of their smoking history range from an ashamed “I’m still smoking” to “I quit as soon as I was diagnosed” to an astonished “I quit 15 years ago” to an angry “How could this happen to me, I never smoked?” (as if anyone deserves to get lung cancer, or that only people who have smoked will get lung cancer.)
 

The patient is a 47-year-old single mother of two adolescents who has been diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. This woman will soon start a concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment. She has revealed that she has stopped working, is experiencing financial difficulty and is without transport for her treatments that start in a week. The oncology social worker has been asked to do an assessment of social functioning.  

To say that I am excited to be President-Elect of AOSW is an understatement!

Susan Glaser, LCSW
Senior Clinical Social Worker and Supervisor
Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York
 

Many of you participated in A Project to Assure Quality Cancer Care (APAQCC), the study on psychosocial distress screening in cancer patients which was funded by the Association of Oncology Social Work (AOSW) with a gift from the Takeda Company. A review of the study is currently highlighted on the homepage of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

View ASCO’s review of the study here.