SAN DIEGO—Susan A. Newton, RN, MS, AOCN, is an independent consultant based in Dayton, Ohio, who travels throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky teaching patients and colleagues, regionally and nationally, about cancer-related fatigue and pain management.
She gives full-day preceptorships to nurses, conducts workshops in hospitals and clinics, chairs task forces, heads an Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) chapter, and writes and reviews articles. In April, 2001, she co-authored an article on cancer-related fatigue in a supplement (Oncology Nursing Update) to the American Journal of Nursing (Newton S, Smith LD: Am J Nursing 101:31, 2001).
At the Oncology Nursing Society’s 26th Annual Congress in San Diego, Ms. Newton received the Fatigue Initiative Through Research and Education (FIRE) Excellence Award co-sponsored by ONS and Ortho Biotech Products, LP.
The award honors an oncology nurse who has made outstanding contributions to cancer-related fatigue, clinical practice, education, or research.
Ms. Newton’s educational programs have changed "standing orders, algorithms, standardized teaching plans, and patient classes," said Bill Pearson, Ortho Biotech vice president, Strategic Customer Group. Pearl Moore, RN, MN, FAAN, chief executive officer of ONS, called her "a woman with a cause."
In an interview, Ms. Newton told ONI, "One of the things I’m most proud of as a nurse is the huge impact nurses can have on the lives of patients with fatigue, because fatigue is a manageable symptom."
Nurses can help these patients enormously just by educating them about energy conservation principles (prioritizing and delegating tasks) or checking for anemia "because that’s something we can fix," she said. "These are things that can really make a difference to patients. After I do these programs, patients over and over come back and say, wow, that really helped."
