Denise Reinke, APRN, BC, AOCN

Denise Reinke, APRN, BC, AOCN

Denise Reinke is a Sarcoma Nurse Practitioner at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and is the Administrative Director of SARC (Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration, see the sidebar below). She has been a nurse for 31 years and has spent 29 of those years caring for people with cancer in a variety of settings. Her first oncology experience was as a nurse in radiation oncology in the 1970s when oncology nursing as a subspecialty was in its infancy. Over the years, she has established an outpatient oncology program within a health maintenance organization, worked as part of a bone marrow transplant team, was a nurse practitioner in a private hematology/oncology practice, and worked as a medical science liaison for a pharmaceutical company.

For the past 5 years, she has been working collaboratively with Dr. Larry Baker at the University of Michigan (see ESUN June 2006 article). One of Dr. Baker’s visions has been to bring together a group of sarcoma specialists to collaborate on clinical trials for patients with sarcoma. Hence, the formation of SARC, a non-for-profit organization with the mission and vision to facilitate the collaborative sarcoma research endeavors of not only physicians within the United States but in Europe as well. Denise provides administrative oversight for this collaboration.

She received her Master of Science degree from the University of Michigan, Bachelor of Science in nursing from Alverno College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and diploma in nursing from Milwaukee County School of Nursing. She is a member of the national Oncology Nursing Society and president of the Ann Arbor local chapter of the Oncology Nursing Society. Additionally, Denise is a member of ASCO and the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. She has recently coauthored publications on standing orders for nursing care of cancer patients and on a collaborative cancer clinical trial. Denise has facilitated the collaborative translation of the NCCN sarcoma guidelines and have provided editorial oversight for this project which is being spearheaded by sarcoma nurses in SARC. She has been a guest lecturer at 4 major conferences this past year, providing information and updates on sarcoma diagnosis and treatment. Denise started a new, regular column for ESUN called, "From a Nurse's Perspective", which launched in 2007.