A nurse navigator will assist patients throughout their cancer journey.
Our Nurse Navigators:
- Reinforce patient education on cancer types, treatment options, and clinical trial availability
- Coordinate office visits across medical disciplines to streamline cancer care delivery
- Facilitate communication between all members of healthcare team
- Participate in multidisciplinary team conferences to promote collaboration in cancer treatment
- Provide a personalized touch to cancer care by visiting patients at appointments, assessing patients needs, and relaying relevant information to providers
- Serve as an ongoing source of support for patients, and are available to answer ongoing questions
- Help decrease barriers to care by assessing needs and linking patients with support groups and community resources
Our navigation staff plays a vital role in cancer care, managing what patients go through on a day to day basis. Patients routinely tell us what a difference our staff make as they go through one of the most challenging times of their lives. At Sarah Cannon we have formalized a process to allow nurse navigators to comprehensively manage a patient’s experience with cancer.
We have created oncology pathways that help ensure seamless care across the cancer journey for both the patient and providers. Pathways ultimately improve consistency and maintain quality care and patient outcomes. Over the last few decades, patient navigation has developed and gained prominence, to the extent that this process is now a requirement of major oncology accreditation bodies. These requirements are not the only reason that patient navigation programs have proliferated – studies have demonstrated clinical benefits (including increased screening rates, improved stage at diagnosis, reduced broken appointment rates and more timely follow up) and improvements in patient satisfaction.
Sarah Cannon has created a patient navigation system that addresses the continuum of cancer care. The system is designed to support patient navigators in all phases of the treatment spectrum, addressing prevention, screening and early detection, diagnosis, treatment, palliative and supportive care. By tracking progress, providing check lists, facilitating communication and producing reminders, the system is a vital tool in the expansion of our capabilities and patient outcome success. Our efforts will both strengthen the care that we are able to give our patients and provide support to the staff who administers this outstanding care.
Sarah Cannon has invested in nurse navigators, who specialize in cancer, to support patients as they go through the many stages of living with cancer. We have implemented technology systems that help manage all of the relevant details of a patient’s care, including appointment management, reminders, surgical consults, eliminating barriers to care, patient interactions and everything in between. This technology and our highly trained staff work together as a very sophisticated “buddy system” – partnered with patients, making sure that we exceed their expectations.