Multidisciplinary Care, Targeted Therapies Shape NSCLC Practice at JADPRO Live 2026

As treatment options for non-small cell lung cancer continue to expand, oncology nurses play an increasingly important role in patient education, symptom management, and care coordination. At JADPRO Live 2026, sessions highlighted advances in targeted therapies, immunotherapy, multidisciplinary treatment planning, and managing oligometastatic disease.

In this Q&A, Sarah Anderson, DNP, AGACNP-BC, OCN, WCC , of RUSH MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the findings and practice considerations most relevant to oncology nurses caring for patients with NSCLC. – This transcript has been edited for clarity. What were the most important non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) updates from JADPRO Live 2026 that oncology nurses should know about?

Sarah Anderson, DNP, AGACNP-BC, OCN, WCC: There were a couple of sessions that highlighted some advancements. One of the sessions was given by a thoracic surgeon who talked about how we should look at oligometastatic non-small cell lung cancer in the setting of an isolated area of progression and whether we should be thinking about surgery as an ablative therapy.

It highlighted that we can be more aggressive with these folks because they’re often young and healthy. If they’re doing really well on a targeted therapy, for example, why aren’t we offering them a chance at having improved progression-free survival? Whether you take them to radiation or surgery in the area where their disease started, data showed an advantage in having more durable control, and they’re able to stay on their therapies a bit longer when we go and treat their disease.

A lot of the discussion was around what do we offer these patients? If they’re young and healthy and can go through an operation, surgery may be a good fit. If they’re more frail and maybe surgery isn’t a good option, but they’re doing well and their disease is controlled, we talked about using radiation therapy as a good option.

One takeaway was the need for a multidisciplinary panel in the future to talk through the options because, in many of these situations with patients living longer and doing better, it often takes a big team. It’s not just the surgeon or the radiation oncologist, but also the medical oncologist, pulmonary team, etc.

Other presentations covered advancements in targeted therapies and immunotherapies. There was a great talk that listed each of the agents and how they’re tolerated, how people do [while on them], what we should consider when patients are on these drugs, why we’re giving them, and how overall the list [of therapies] keeps growing.

It gave a good overview of lung cancer and how far we’ve come, how patients can stay on targeted therapies and immunotherapies much longer, and how well they’re tolerated overall. It covered strategies for symptom and toxicity management. One takeaway was our recommendations on timing, intervals, and treatment gaps, including whether surgery is needed during therapy or radiation.

One thing we want to look at moving forward is having another panel that includes oncology pharmacists, as well as radiation oncology , medical oncology, and surgical oncology, to talk through options for patients who may need a course of radiation or surgery while they’re on these targeted therapies or immunotherapies.

Is there good guidance or a toolkit that outlines whether they should take a treatment break from these therapies or whether they’re safe to continue? Overall, I think the message was that in oncology patients, specifically patients with lung cancer, disease was detected in them early because of good screening.

And there are a lot of options now where patients can remain on their therapies for much longer, so their survival has improved, and [there are more] treatment options that are minimally invasive and well tolerated. Which findings presented at the meeting are most likely to influence how oncology nurses educate and support patients with NSCLC?

Just having a better understanding of what these treatments do to the body and what to expect while a patient is on them so that oncology nurses can have a better understanding of the toxicities and how to manage them, [as well as] when to hold a medication versus take a treatment break or discontinue altogether, and how these medications and treatments interact with or supplement other treatments.

There’s a synergistic effect with radiation where some of these agents make radiation more effective. Others may impair healing or interact with the timing of surgery or recovery. It’s just being mindful of how we’re doing these treatments and what the clinical paradigm looks like.

Understanding where we’re at with neoadjuvant treatment, adjuvant therapy, and even some consolidation options, because these patients are doing so well and may be candidates for more than one therapy. And understanding how all the teams are involved. Were there any conversations or data at JADPRO Live that could help advanced practitioners navigate side effect management considerations for NSCLC treatments?

Having a good understanding of the drug’s indication really helps, especially in radiation—whether we need to consider holding it for certain radiation factors or whether it’s more important that the patient continues the therapy. If it’s well tolerated and we know that they’ll do okay taking a treatment break from their targeted therapy, [or whether doing so] could cause progression of disease, we have our patients stay on it.

We also have to be educated on the toxicities of these targeted therapies and immunotherapies so that we can help with symptom management, especially when they’re going through radiation therapy. They can have lasting side effects, so as an advanced practice provider, it’s good to know what the patient’s going through, what the expected recovery is after surgery, and the general indications and side effects of the different therapies they’re receiving through medical oncology.

And understanding the guidelines for surveillance and management, what’s appropriate for medication management, working closely with the pharmacist to understand what’s an expected side effect versus something else that we should work up, and how best to follow them for survivorship in conjunction with the other teams.

Just good multidisciplinary care . I think nurse practitioners are referred to as the glue in the multidisciplinary world. One of the things we talked about was managing oncologic emergencies. [Things like] when is the best time to consult us if they have a patient with an oncologic emergency such as SVC [superior vena cava] syndrome, airway compromise, cord compression, or symptomatic brain mets.

Having a good understanding of when to involve us or what’s urgent versus emergent. We also talked about when to consult us and what to expect with these treatments. Our talk really highlighted some of what was going on in the other discussions.

When do we use radiation, and when can we monitor the patient and then do it later? But it’s teamwork. Managing the patient’s symptoms and getting them to the most appropriate treatment in a timely manner is what’s important because we know time to treatment matters.

Often the nurse practitioners are on the front line. They’re triaging the patients, they’re helping get stat imaging, they’re putting in the referrals, they’re talking to the attendings, they’re quarterbacking, getting the patient where they need to go as quickly as possible and as efficiently as possible while also educating the patient and providing compassionate care to the families.

How can oncology nurses help patients navigate increasingly complex treatment decisions, including immunotherapy and targeted therapies, in NSCLC? I think it’s a blessing and a curse that we have so many different options. Sometimes it’s hard for patients to know what’s the best decision for them.

Often, they get treatment recommendations with a few different choices and have a hard time selecting what they feel is best for them. The good news is that we’re in a place in oncology where treatments are evolving, and there might be more than one right answer for a patient. It’s just encouraging them to think about what’s best for them.

Each care plan is very individualized. It shouldn’t be black and white. It should be tailored to the patient, the logistics, their family support at home, their support system, how frail they are, and their performance status.

Nurses can provide a good overview and education and support the patient in making the best decision for them. Oftentimes, they are also really good at educating and re-discussing the plan in a way that a patient can understand because sometimes they’ll leave appointments and say, “Oh my gosh, I don’t understand a thing that was just told to me.

What does this all mean?” So, nurses can be pivotal in educating and encouraging patients, helping them understand all the options, and then getting them to a place of deciding. Sometimes that’s also coordinating if they’re worried about housing or transportation, getting the social workers involved, getting the dietitians involved if they need help with appetite or access to food, getting the financial coordinators involved if they’re worried about how this is going to impact their financial situation, triaging their symptoms and making sure that they have medications for how they feel, and notifying the providers and us about what it is that they need so that they are successful in their treatments.

Looking ahead, which NSCLC advances discussed at JADPRO Live 2026 do you expect to have the greatest impact on patient care over the next year? Definitely multi-D collaboration. What I mean by that is that the most impactful thing is having a patient see everyone from each disease site.

A patient should theoretically have access to, and receive input from, the surgeons, radiation oncologists, and medical oncologists. It takes a team of people. Patients having access to a center that offers multidisciplinary care will impact the success of their treatment.

It takes a village to treat a patient with cancer. Moving ahead, what’s encouraging is the range of options. Historically, if a patient with lung cancer presented, there were only a few options.

It was either chemotherapy or something palliative , and the prognosis wasn’t as good; people weren’t living as long. Now we’re seeing this survival curve improve: patients are living longer, doing better, tolerating treatment better, and we’re offering minimally invasive surgery and radiation.

We have interventional pulmonology access and can get good tissue diagnoses to send out for molecular profiling. We’re understanding more about actionable mutations and whether immunotherapy is in their future. What’s really encouraging is a lot of discussion for the next JADPRO [centered on] whether we should have a panel with the pharmacists and radiation, with different people on the stage talking through how things look, what we can offer, and what our treatments are about.

Because a lot of times you become so disease-site specific that you may not understand all the elements when it comes to, for example, radiation. So, a lot of us are educating patients on what it means when they get radiation—how many treatments, how we make that decision, and what side effects they might have.

And same for surgery. They’re able to do such amazing things now, where the patient’s admitted for a day or two when it used to be a week. The targeted therapies—we understand how to pre-medicate them so that they have limited toxicities, we’re able to do dose reductions, we know what to do so that they tolerate it better.

We’re seeing more and more of that, that it’s not just one team that manages these patients. It takes multiple teams to see what we can do to help patients.