UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology SUMMER 2024 - Flipbook - Page 48
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
live educational event held exclusively for
brachytherapy nurses.
Making an Impact
As a supervisor, Kafka-Peterson maintains
case schedules to ensure they align with the
radiation and chemo schedules, facilitates
preoperative medical and cardiac clearances,
manages staffing and resources, develops
policies and procedures, and provides
education throughout the health care system.
“We had some great guest speakers, and it
was an overwhelming success,” she says. “It
was the first of many symposiums to come.”
In 2023 and 2024, Kafka-Peterson has
helped form, and chairs, the Brachytherapy
Nursing/Dosimetry/Radiation Therapist
Council through ABS, the first of its kind in
the world. The goal of the council is to start
discussions, network, create educational
resources and begin establishing best
practices.
Out of necessity, she developed her own
extensive brachytherapy training program
for her team and for the inpatient units
caring for brachytherapy patients, but she
knew she could make a bigger impact. A few
years ago, she reached out to the American
Brachytherapy Society (ABS) and was given
the green light to develop the first-ever
educational resources on the organization’s
website.
Kafka-Peterson was honored for her work
in 2023 as one of 30 nurses—10 from UCLA
Health—to be celebrated in the first year of
the Simms/Mann Family Foundation’s Off the
Chart program(Link is external) (Link opens
in new window), which recognizes nursing
excellence.
In the past year, this educational endeavor
has expanded further, with KafkaPeterson being an invited speaker with the
International Gynecologic Cancer Society
(IGCS), the ABS/GEC-ESTRO World Congress,
and the Oncology Nursing Society. She also
has several talks and webinars lined up for
the remainder of 2024 and into 2025.
She calls the award “an amazing shout-out.”
“It was an unexpected, incredibly gracious
honor that spotlights all the amazing things
nurses are doing everywhere,” she said.
“Coming out of a period when being a nurse
manager has been challenging, tiring and
stressful (due to the COVID-19 pandemic),
to have this nice award and nurses being
recognized is so uplifting. It makes me proud
to be a nurse.”
“People are incredibly grateful that
brachytherapy nursing education is
becoming available,” Kafka-Peterson says.
“Available education is mostly for physicians
and physicists, but we are changing that
and providing better access to educational
materials for nurses throughout the world.”
Finding Her Niche
As much as she now loves it, nursing wasn’t
Kafka-Peterson’s first choice when she
entered the University of Iowa.
In 2022, Kafka-Peterson was asked to head
up the ABS’s inaugural nursing symposium.
Held virtually, the event drew 125 people
from five continents and was the world’s first
“I originally was going the medicine route,”
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