Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The William R. Bliss Cancer Center, a partnership between McFarland Clinic and Mary Greeley
Medical Center in Ames, Iowa, created a unique program known as the Nurse Navigator program
to provide coordinated care for patients with breast cancer. Mary Ellen Carano, who is in
charge of the program and acts as a nurse navigator for patients, discusses how the
program got its start and how it works at McFarland Clinic. The Nurse Navigator program
is a program that identifies patients newly-diagnosed with cancer, and particularly, right now,
we're working with breast cancer patients. So, what we do is we meet with patients right
after their initial diagnosis of breast cancer, and then we help them get good information
and resources to make decisions regarding their care. And we also anticipate other needs
that they might have in relationship to the inconvenience that their disease has on their
life. My role is to coordinate the Nurse Navigator program, and so initially, at this point,
I work as a navigator directly with patients. We're looking not only at the physical aspect
of dealing with a diagnosis, but also the social/emotional part of dealing with a diagnosis.
The navigator's key role in that process is assessing what the patient's needs are and
then brainstorming, implementing resources for the patients to deal with the other circumstances
of a newly-diagnosed cancer. McFarland Clinic physicians and the nurse navigator work together
to assess each patient's medical, emotional, and physical needs during the treatment process.
Dr. Partridge, McFarland Clinic surgeon, and Dr. Prow, a member of the clinic's oncology
team, discuss their roles in the program. The role of the medical oncologist, which
is my role, I'm the person who lays out the road map of how you get from the time of diagnosis
through your treatment plan and for follow-up long term. My role in the program is to inform
the nurse navigator of the patient's problem, give her any insight that I've felt, as their
surgeon, giving them advice as far as places I think they need help. The nurse navigator,
you know, they have one role, and that's to help the patient and to make them feel more
comfortable with what's going on. That's my role too, but I also have a role of removing
the cancer from the patient. And it's not that that distracts me from taking care of
them, but it's nice to have that one person that, hopefully, they connect with on an emotional
level, that they can, you know, on a bad day, they can break down with them. On a good day,
they can celebrate and hug with them. You know, all those things we like to do too,
but this is just one more person. To learn more about the Nurse Navigator program, go
online to mcfarlandclinic.com, or contact the William R. Bliss Cancer Center at (515)
239-4401.