Episode 339: A Lesson on Labs: How to Monitor and Educate Patients With Cancer

“The nurse’s role in monitoring the lab values really depends on the clinics you're working at, but really when our patients are receiving treatment, especially in the infusion center, the nurses should be looking at those lab values prior to treatment being started,” Clara Beaver, DNP, RN, AOCNS®, ACNS-BC, clinical nurse specialist at Karmanos Cancer Center in Michigan told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS during a conversation about how to monitor and educate patients with cancer. 

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod  

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0  

Earn [#] contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at courses.ons.org by November 29, 2026. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.  

Learning outcome: The learner will report an increase in knowledge related to monitoring labs and educating patients with cancer.

Episode Notes  

• Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.  
• Oncology Nursing Podcast™ episodes: 
  • Episode 319: Difficult Conversations About Pregnancy Testing in Cancer Care
  • Episode 311: Standardized Pregnancy Testing Processes in Cancer Care
  • Episode 183: How Oncology Nurses Find and Use Credible Patient Education Resources 
  • Episode 179: Learn How to Educate Patients During Immunotherapy 
  • Episode 87: What Are the Biggest Barriers to Patient Education? 
  • Episode 43: Sharing Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Resources 
• ONS Voice articles:  
  • Patient Education Reduces Barriers and Increases Adherence Rates 
  • Nurses Must Understand Health Disparities to Provide Effective Patient Education 
  • Oncology Nurses Can Improve Oral Medication Management With Patient Education Program 
• ONS Course: ONS Fundamentals of Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy Administration™  
• Oncology Nursing Forum article: Antineoplastic Therapy Administration Safety Standards for Adult and Pediatric Oncology: ASCO-ONS Standards
• Clinical Calculations—ANC Huddle Card

To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.   

To find resources for creating an Oncology Nursing Podcast club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.  

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email pubONSVoice@ons.org.  

“Your traditional chemotherapy agents are the ones that we see the most lab abnormalities with, and we can predict those a little bit more with the advent of more of the advanced targeted therapies and immunotherapies, we still see lab values that are altered because of the way that the treatment works, but they may differ a little bit than what we traditionally saw with our normal chemotherapy agents.” TS 2:51 

“I talked about the lifespan of all the other cells, and Neutrophils are usually what stop treatment, and part of that is, is that the lifespan of a neutrophil is 48 hours. It is proliferated very frequently in the bone marrow. But that is usually what we see. The cells that we see that stop treatment, and as you mentioned earlier, classic chemotherapy really the types of treatment that historically, we've been given and we have given to patients, and we've seen those blood counts really significantly impacted.” TS 6:21 

“Kidney function, or renal function tests, are really determined whether the kidneys are functioning the way they should be. We look at an estimated glomerular filtration rate, or GFR, which is really based on the patient’s protein level, their age, gender, and race. And the test really looks at how efficiently the kidneys are clearing the waste from the body. So that’s really one that we need to look at, especially as we’re giving agents that are excreted through the kidneys.” TS 12:23 

“I think it’s important for nurses to start looking at lab results with their patient very early on, you know, even before treatment starts, so they understand what the normals look like. So when they do get those lab results, because now pretty much everybody has patient portals, right? So the labs are reported in there, and they’re seeing the labs before they're talking to their providers.  if we can start early on and talk to them about what the normal lab values are, what they mean, and what we're looking at when we're drawing these labs. I think it’s really important for the patient.” TS 27:00