“Who would think that we would be here 50 years later? And with the excitement that I think will build even more, I’m so humbled and honored to talk to young nurses. And their excitement—the same excitement that we had in the very beginning—is inherent. I hope that our legacy will be that we are able to pass on this tremendous gift of our careers to new nurses,” Cindi Cantril, MPH, RN, OCN®-Emeritus, founding ONS member and first vice president, told Darcy Burbage, DNP, RN, AOCN®, CBCN®, chair of the ONS 50th Anniversary Committee, during a conversation about the history of ONS’s inception. Burbage spoke with Cantril and Connie Henke Yarbro, MS, RN, FAAN, founding ONS member and first treasurer, about the inspirational nurses who started the organization and its impact over the past 50 years.

Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 

Episode Notes 

• NCPD contact hours are not available for this episode.
• ONS Podcast™ episodes:
  • Episode 337: Meet the ONS Board of Directors: Haynes, Wilson, and Yackzan
  • Episode 258: ONS Through the Ages: Stories From the Early Days With Cindi Cantril and George Hill
• ONS Voice articles:
  • Connie Henke Yarbro Oncology Nursing History Center Commemorates the Legacy of Oncology Nurses
  • Nurses Empower Change Through Leadership and Advocacy Roles
  • Seeds Planted Today Nurture a Harvest of Future Generations of Oncology Nurses
  • ONS’s Success Is Our Success
• Connie Henke Yarbro Oncology Nursing History Center
• ONS Mission, Vision, and Values
• Oncology Nursing Foundation
• Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing article: Supporting One Another for 40 Years

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

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

To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [email protected].

Highlights From This Episode

Yarbro: “In 1973, there was really kind of the first nursing conference for oncology nurses in Chicago. At that conference, Lisa Begg Marino and Shirlee Koons, myself, and about 20 nurses met to discuss how we could identify each other and that we needed to communicate because we were really each isolated in our own separate cancer center or clinic.” TS 2:09 

Cantril: “What’s interesting is that I contacted a lawyer in St. Louis and told him what we were trying to do, and the comment was shocking at the time. And he said, ‘Well, you know, you really could have your own autonomy. It would just cost $25, and you could start your own charter organization.’ Little did we know that we would grow to be where we are.” TS 3:50 

Yarbro: “I was with medical oncology, and you [Cindi] were with surgeons, so we were really all defining our roles. At that time, I was medical oncology, and I would travel the state of Alabama with the medicine to give the Hodgkin’s disease patients or children with leukemia their second dose, so they did not have to drive to the medical center because there weren’t any oncologists in the community. They were just made at the academic centers. Today, I don’t know whether you could get in a car and travel with your vincristine, procarbazine, and all the other medicines.” TS 11:24 

Cantril: “How do we facilitate a large, organized fashion and allowing people to have some sort of more intimate autonomy in their own environment? Because let’s face it, not every nurse is going to be able to go to Congress. Not every nurse is going to be able to go to a regional meeting. So the chapters really allowed for a wider net for us to identify nurses so invested in cancer nursing.” TS 25:23