AOSW Connections

One of the quotes from this year’s conference that stuck with me is from Dr. Julia Rowland’s message in her Keynote Address: “Care planning is a process, not an event.” Dr. Rowland was speaking to the transitions of care for our patients. I find her words are also applicable to the growth of AOSW as an organization. It is helpful for me to think about AOSW’s leadership succession as a process rather than a single point of time or activity.

Preservation of fertility is an integral component to providing comprehensive, supportive care to adolescents and young adults with cancer.

“Staffing standards” is one issue that oncology social workers mention frequently to researchers. It is possible to use research results to compare staffing levels at your own cancer center with those at similar centers. Often, when oncology social workers have shown administrators that their staffing is below that of other cancer centers, they have been able to hire more social workers. Here is some information to help you calculate a comparison.

I remember my very first AOSW Annual Conference in La Jolla, California, back in 1998 (I think it was ‘98) and I attended a talk on depression in patients with cancer by Susan Hedlund. I thought she was a brilliant (and beautiful) inspiration. She was also an excellent actor! She role-played a young woman with brain cancer in “Life of a Group,” a dramatic and emotional role in a support group performed by our leaders on stage. I learned that she was President of AOSW. I think I decided that day that I wanted to be an OSW just like her.

Terry was a 64-year-old single man with advanced esophageal cancer who had recently discontinued treatment and entered our home hospice care program when I met him for the first time. He lived alone in a boarding home for ex-convicts, presented as withdrawn and depressed, and rarely spoke through my initial visit, but agreed to my offer to return the following week. When I arrived for our second visit, Terry said he had had a rough night, adding, “But then again, every night is rough.” When I asked him to elaborate, he said that he rarely slept and when he did fall asleep, he was plagued by horrible nightmares about being “in hell.” This led into conversation regarding his beliefs about an afterlife, and he revealed that he felt certain that he would be condemned to hell for things he had done when he was younger. Further, he shared his belief that his cancer diagnosis was a punishment from God for being a bad person. Terry speculated, “You probably already know what I’ve done.” When I responded that I didn’t, and that he was under no obligation to tell me but that I was more than willing to listen, he burst into tears and told me, “I’m a sick, sick [man]. Didn’t anyone tell you I’m a registered sex offender?” He went on to share that he had molested his ex-girlfriend’s daughter 10 years earlier, and had spent time in jail for it. He added, “I’m no better than the priest that molested me and my brother. He was a sick man and so am I.”

How long have you been an oncology social worker?
I worked in adult oncology for three years and have been in pediatric oncology for a little over nine months now. Before that, I worked at an inpatient psychiatric facility for about seven years.