The annual Tandem meeting is an excellent event for education, networking and research relating to transplantation, CAR-T and other cellular therapies. Tandem 2025 was held in Honolulu in February, and we were pleased to have been able to offer a Jazz Pharmaceuticals Travel Award to Barbara O’Callaghan from Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia.

Barbara is the clinical nurse coordinator (CNC) for haematology at Fiona Stanley Hospital, which is the state referral centre for both allogeneic transplant and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy for WA. With over 25 years of experience in cancer services, Barbara is a highly experienced and respected senior nurse. She plays a crucial role in Fiona Stanley Hospital’s transplant team in mentoring other nurses, providing expert clinical input, and working on policy to ensure both safe and effective clinical care as well as compliance with accreditation standards. In particular, Barbara has been a key member of the team working to first achieve and then maintain the hospital’s accreditation with the Foundation for Accreditation of Cellular Therapies (FACT). More recently, Barbara has helped to implement the new CAR-T service, including establishing effective care models for patients admitted for observation and treatment of immunotherapy complications. She is also an active member of the cellular therapy team who are currently reviewing requests for support of non-haematology cellular therapy clinical trials from other specialities at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Barbara is a very deserving recipient of the Arrow travel scholarship, and she was thrilled to hear she had been selected to attend the Tandem meeting, a conference she had not previously had the opportunity to attend. Duncan Purtill, the Head of Haematology at Fiona Stanley Hospital, shared her excitement saying, “It’s fantastic that Arrow is able to support Barb; nurses such as her are such an asset to transplant programs (and their patients most especially!) and its really nice to have her go to the conference and feel so valued. I know she will greatly benefit from support to attend this meeting, and bring this experience back to the benefit of our program and especially the nurses and allied health staff she works with day to day.”

Tandem reinforced the importance of excellence in nursing care

Tandem 2025 was just as beneficial as Barbara had hoped. It has kept her abreast of advancements in haematology and provided new knowledge to share with her colleagues. Barbara said, “It was such a great experience and very inspirational, and has inspired me to continue trying to improve what we do every day”.

The conference highlighted for Barbara the importance of great nursing care, and she has brought home many ideas for improvement that can be undertaken relatively quickly, easily and cheaply in day-to-day patient care which will lead to better patient outcomes. One such simple measure is to make sure that staff are being vigilant about mucosal barrier injuries (MBI).

An MBI refers to the breakdown of the protective lining (mucosa) of the digestive tract, which can lead to bloodstream infections in bone marrow stem cell transplant patients who are often extremely immunocompromised.

Barbara is reminding nursing staff to talk with patients about oral care. “We always do ask about it,” Barbara said, “but we often say ‘Are you doing your mouth care?’ And the patient will say ‘Yes.’ But we sometimes don’t go on to ask what exactly they’re doing. It might be that they’re using mouth wash, which is good, but that they’re not brushing their teeth. If we know that, we can remind patients that brushing twice a day is really important. It’s more important for them than it is for the rest of us, because they’re so immunocompromised, often with altered flora (the bacteria and other microorganisms in the mouth and digestive tract). A mouth infection can lead to other much more serious complications. Just changing the way we check up on oral care could make the difference between a patient developing a serious infection or not.”

Another thing Barbara wants to remind staff to be vigilant of is monitoring patients’ skin, especially around the points of “vascular access” — the insertion sites of PICC lines, Hickman Lines and other catheters, for example. Being aware of subtle changes to the skin in these areas and escalating any potential problems early can help reduce infection. Reduced risk of infection means less chance of needing to go the intensive care unit, less need for additional testing, less need for additional medications, and potentially also a reduction in the overall time spent in hospital.

One thing that struck Barbara as she listened to presentations at Tandem 2025 was the difference between Australia and other parts of the world in terms of how much care is done in the hospital compared with out patient care. Barbara plans to explore with her team opportunities to reduce hospital length of stay by delivering care as an outpatient in the CAR T and Allogeneic setting.

“By commencing allogeneic conditioning regimens as an outpatient,” Barbara says, “patients could be cared for through our cancer centre and only admitted to an inpatient bed when clinically required, greatly improving the quality of life for our patients. I hope by exploring these opportunities patient outcomes will be improved.”

A surprise meeting with an old colleague

On a more personal note, Barbara was thrilled to reconnect with an old friend and colleague, Dr Kenneth Lim. Kenneth was a young Resident Medical Officer at Fiona Stanley Hospital in its very early days. Fiona was pleased to bump into Kenneth quite by chance at this year’s Tandem conference, and to hear that he is now an Advanced Hematology Fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA.