Melissa Culligan, a member of the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation’s Board of Directors started her work on Saturday, December 3 at the 17th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), held in Vienna, Austria by attending an all day working meeting focused on the development of an Immunotherapy Guideline for clinicians. This working meeting was held by the IASLC Nursing and Allied Health Committee of which Ms. Culligan is an active member, and a member of the Research sub-committee.
Later that same day, in her role as the Chair of the International Thoracic Oncology Nursing Forum (ITONF), Ms. Culligan made a business presentation to the Global Coalition on Lung Cancer committee members. This presentation focused on the growth and progress ITONF has made over the past two years since she as assumed the role of Chair and she presented the 5-year strategic plan for the continued growth of the organization.
That evening, Ms. Culligan and the ITONF Steering Committee members held a working meeting with AstraZeneca to continue their work on a thoracic oncology nursing education program focused on developing educational materials for nurses in the area of immunotherapy. This is an ongoing project that Melissa is leading with ITONF and AstraZeneca.
Following that meeting, Ms. Culligan chaired the ITONF Steering committee’s annual face-to-face meeting where this group was able to review the 5-year strategic plan and discuss the continued growth of their organization.
On Sunday, December 4, Ms. Culligan attended a meeting of the Squamous Cell Lung Cancer Consortium of which she is a member.
In the afternoon, Ms. Culligan chaired the membership meeting for ITONF where she again presented the growth and progress ITONF has made over the past two years since she as assumed the role of Chair and she presented the 5-year strategic plan for the continued growth of the organization.
Following the business meeting, Ms. Culligan lead the ITONF workshop, “Innovating Lung Cancer and Mesothelioma Care” which presented an extensive educational program for thoracic oncology nurses who care for lung cancer and mesothelioma patients. The workshop featured world leaders in thoracic oncology from Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Ms. Culligan gave a presentation entitled, “Challenges to Conducting Clinical Trials in Thoracic Surgery.” For the first time, this meeting was certified for continuing education credits, video recorded and will be interpreted into two languages. It will then be made available to nurses around the world by way of the ITONF website. Ms. Culligan spearheaded this initiative as a way for more nurses to benefit from the expertise assembled for the workshop.
During the WCLC, Ms. Culligan, in her role as the Director of Clinical Research in Thoracic Surgery at the University of Maryland, had two poster presentations highlighting her ongoing nurse-led research focused on improving the care being delivered to mesothelioma and lung cancer patients having surgery. The posters where entitled “WINNERS Study: Does a formal pre-operative/perioperative interactive patient education program positively impact patient outcomes and satisfaction following thoracic surgery” and “TeleNursing: A thoracic surgery nursing initiative aimed at decreasing hospital readmissions and increasing patient satisfaction.” Ms. Culligan also chaired a scientific session during the conference entitled “Nurses in the Care for Mesothelioma and Lung Cancer and in Research.” Also during the WCLC, she met with research colleagues from the US, France and Israel about moving forward with international, multi-institutional surgery-based clinical trials focused on improving the treatment outcomes for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.
Melissa Culligan, RN, MS has worked as a thoracic oncology nurse since 1987 in various capacities ranging from the intensive care unit to nurse navigator for pleural malignancy patients. In 1998 she began to specialize in caring for mesothelioma patients and conducting clinical research focused on combining surgery with photodynamic therapy for mesothelioma and other pleural malignancies. She has had the opportunity to work on multiple other clinical trials for mesothelioma over the years and is a co-author on multiple scientific publications in the area of mesothelioma research. She has lectured nationally and internationally on the subject of establishing and building a multidisciplinary mesothelioma program as well as caring for pleural malignancy patients. In 2013 she received her Master of Science degree from Drexel University’s College of Medicine in the area of Clinical Research Organization and Management. She is currently a clinical instructor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Maryland and the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Division of Thoracic Surgery’s Program Administrator and Director of Clinical Research. Melissa serves on the Board of Director’s of the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation.
