Have you ever received a friend or follow request from a patient or caregiver? What was your reaction? Entering into any kind of dual relationship can have implications for clinical encounters and boundary maintenance. In this session, we will explore the ethical challenges of social media connections between clinicians and our clients-with specific attention to informed consent, privacy, confidentiality permanency and what constitutes “practice” in social media spaces. We will also examine the benefits and risks of social media use by patients, in sharing their stories and experiences in

Breaking bad news is a necessary task for care providers, but the emotions of providers and patients can make this task painfully difficult. This session shares practical takeaways providers can use when faced with having to share some bad news with a patient. We'll discuss a new perspective on how emotions actually work (hint: preformed emotion circuits are not hardwired into your brain), bust some common myths about emotions, and explore what this perspective means for how we can approach bad news conversations. In all cases, our takeaways will be informed by the latest social scientific

In this session, learners will gain a different understanding of how psychoeducation and encouragement of mental health practice strategies can be approached and encouraged.  First, the concepts of this session will focus on system attunement and regulation, including discussions on internal-external systems, sensory systems, regulation, and mindfulness. Then concepts shift focus to processing skills and practices which include reflection, self-compassion, communication, and relationships. Learners will be engaged in activities throughout the session to help foster comprehension and provide

There is increasing acceptance that avoidable and unjust differences in health status cannot be explained by genetics, biology, and individual behavior or choices. To achieve broad health equity in oncology and beyond, healthcare workers must attend to the structural forces, including structural racism and ethnocentrism, that shape health outcomes. This presentation is an overview of structural competency, a shift in healthcare training from individual patient or provider factors toward attention to forces that influence health outcomes at levels above the individual. We will cover structural

In this talk, Lorelei Bonet will propose a model of work that she has been developing that she calls “HeartWork”. To do “HeartWork”, one does not view “self-care” as outside of, but rather very much as part of how we craft and perform our jobs on a daily basis. It seeks to position the work of the oncology social worker as reciprocal—with the ability to replenish and restore, not merely or exclusively to drain. Using literature from the fields of Social Work, Nursing, Chaplaincy, and Industrial Psychology, Lorelei Bonet would like to explore how and to what extent the unique challenges of our

In this interactive session, attendees will learn more about the history of medical mistrust in various communities, hear about current research being conducted in the areas of medical mistrust, and share their own experiences with fostering and maintaining rapport and trust.

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Despite our best efforts, it continues to be difficult for people to access palliative care across the disease trajectory, as palliative care is often conflated with end-of-life care by US healthcare professionals as well as patients and families. If you are poor, speak a language other than English, identify as a person of color, or are part of a marginalized group, access happens very late in the disease process if at all.  For people with cancer, it becomes very complicated as it is rarely suggested when they are receiving "aggressive" treatment. Oncology social workers occupy a critical

Are you interested in providing better care for sexual and gender minority cancer patients but don't know where to start? This session will be an overview of different issues sexual and gender minority patients can present with and basic steps providers should have in place to help counter discrimination-related disparities experienced by this population. The session will review what is known about increased physical and especially psychosocial risks for this population; how that constellation of experiences creates differential care considerations; how medical mistrust and social support are