Living Legend A Living Legend in Pediatric Oncology Nursing: Genevieve Foley, RN, MSN Presented by Kathy Ruccione, RN, MSN, and Pamela S. Hinds, RN, PhD, CS I N FEBRUARY 1973, the Massachusetts General Hospital opened a Special Hema- tology Clinic to improve continuity of care between inpatient and ambulatory services and to educate medical and nursing person- nel in the long-term physical and emotional needs of leukemic children and their families. So began a landmark article published in the American Journal ofNursing (AJY76: 1115- 1119, 1976). Genevieve Foley, RN, MSN, wrote the article with Ann Marie McCarthy and lived the experience. Gen, of the dancing Irish eyes and prematurely grey hair, truly is a living legend in pediatric oncology nursing and hers is the first in the series of interviews with pioneers in our specialty which begins in this issue. Gen grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and stayed there her entire childhood. She was educated in Catholic schools, but de- cided against career advice that she become a nun. Instead, she went to Boston College for her baccalaureate where she was encour- aged by two supportive instructors to con- sider working with children. At that time, the conventional wisdom was to get a year’s medical-surgical experience after gradua- tion, not to go straight into a specialty area. In part because of Gen’s ability to listen to a young girl with leukemia who needed to talk From St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Mem- phis, TN, and Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, CA. Address reprint requests to Pamela S. Hinds, RN, PhD, CS, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 332 N. Lauder- dale, PO Box 318, Memphis, TN 38101, 0 1997 by Association of Pediatric Oncology Nurses. 1043-4542/97/1402-0007$3.00/0 about dying, the two instructors influenced her to go directly into pediatrics. Gen worked for a year in general pediatrics on a 52-bed unit in a community hospital. She says that experience taught her how important it is to understand the meaning of illness for a fam- ily, that whether a child has broken a leg or has a life-threatening condition, to the par- ents it may be almost the same. After teaching for a year in a diploma school of nursing, Gen was accepted into the first Clinical Nurse Specialist track class at the University of Pennsylvania. When Gen talks about her graduate education she tells about the patients who taught her life-long lessons. She says that a life-long theme in her practice has been to try to help people see the child with cancer as a child. A watershed in her professional life came with the invitation she received to help set up one of the first outpatient programs for children with cancer, the clinic at Massachusetts Gen- eral Hospital she wrote about in the AJY article. Gen practiced there for a decade before moving into an administrative role at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where she served as the Director of Nursing Practice until the summer of 1996. Gen, with Dianne Fochtman, edited the first textbook of pediatric oncology nursing (Nursing Care of the Child with Cancer), now in its second edition. She served as APON’s third president, and has been a long-time volunteer for the American Cancer Society (ACS) at the local and national level. She has received numerous honors and awards, and currently is the editor in chief of Cancer Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, Vol 14, No 2 (April), 1997: pp 99-l 05 99