In a conversation with CancerNetwork®, Beth Sandy, CRNP, spoke about the evolving roles of advanced practice providers (APPs) in the lung cancer field and how new data from meetings like the IASLC 2026 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) may continue to impact those trajectories.
Sandy, a nurse practitioner at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania of Penn Medicine, noted continued interdisciplinary collaboration with colleagues like clinical pharmacists as key themes for APPs, especially when it comes to monitoring and managing emergent toxicities during lung cancer therapy. She also noted the importance of working with subspecialties like dermatology and ophthalmology to further optimize adverse effect management.
Transcript:
CancerNetwork: How do you see the role of the APP evolving as regimens get more complex, and how might new data from WCLC influence that evolution?
Continuing to be on top of all of the new strategies and all of the new treatments. I think it’s been really hard because there are so many different ones at this point. I think our clinical pharmacists have been helpful at working with us hand in hand. I don’t know what I would do without our clinical pharmacists because they’re so good at helping us look up what the percentages of these toxicities are.
Then, for us APPs in clinical practice, and maybe the nurse practitioners [NPs] and the patient advocates [PAs] who are actually seeing the patients, trying some of these other toxicity management strategies has been helpful. But I think we just need to work as a multidisciplinary unit, working with not only the clinical pharmacists but also the subspecialties like dermatology and ophthalmology. We’ve been working closely with an ophthalmologist now to help manage some of these [adverse] effects. I think the reality is that we’re going to have to really partner with our other subspecialties.
