dr. ronald e. mcnair acknowledgements - University of St. Thomas

UST McNair Scholars Program Research Journal
patient. To address time constraints, the doctor could enlist
the help of other health care professionals such as nurses
and patient navigation advocates in order to make the
patient feel they matter. Research from Kaiser et al. (2009)
indicated the patient is more likely to trust the doctor if
they feel they matter. Much more than this, if the patient
feels they matter to the doctor, they are more likely to trust
other specialists the doctor recommends to them.
Health care providers, such as nurses or patient
navigation advocates, could perhaps also play a bigger role
in making the patient feel like they matter from the very
first phone call to the patient. If the woman must receive
the diagnosis over the phone, the nurse or doctor giving
the news ought to have information for the woman about
the illness, and possible treatment plans. The professional
could take into account the woman’s feelings on the subject
and not be cold in the delivery of the news. The health care
professional could attempt to schedule an informational
meeting with the woman as soon as possible, even if an
appointment with the physician is not possible within a
week. This will ensure women do not sit with news of their
cancer for weeks without information and support.
When interviewed, the post-breast cancer participants
in the current study had several suggestions for health care
professionals. A woman remarked she wants doctors to be
concerned with the quality of her life after treatments by
saying,
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“I just feel like, um, the medical community needs to have a
little more understanding of what quality of life is for an
individual person, not just the treatment but the fact that,
You’re going to live, but are you going to live with good
quality or with just what you need to survive. Living and
surviving and, being successful are really different things to
everybody. You know what I mean. There are different
qualities and different aspects that have to go into all those
things. You know. You can live but if you’re not living the
quality of life or the success that you need for your life, then
it seems a lot pointless.”
Results from this study imply there needs to be more
attention to long term side effects from treatments, and
strategies to cope with and heal from those side effects. A
woman in this study remarked there have been
improvements, but there is still work to do. The woman
went on to say, [the medical center I go to] “has a newsletter
that goes out to patients that have had breast cancer and I have
seen more awareness developing in that of sort of like long term
kind of thing, you know, exercise classes or what are the effects
after you have had cancer 10, 5-10 years later. I have seen a little
bit more attention given to the issue rather than just talking about
it.” This study shows what many breast cancer patients are
sure to agree with: having breast cancer is not just
something someone has at some point in their life, it is
something the person has to deal with her entire life. Due
to this factor, doctors should give more attention to post
treatment or survivorship issues.
In order to address long-term survivorship issues, there
could be a specialist who provides occupational assessments
for patients. These exist in some breast centers today. The
specialist assesses the patient’s physical abilities prior to
any form of treatment in order to see what it is the patient
does for a living. For example, a patient might receive an
assessment that discovers he or she is a pianist. This would
be particularly helpful because the occupational assessment
specialist can pinpoint the muscles and ligaments in the
arms involved in playing piano. Doctors would receive this
information and would therefore be careful of these
locations, or perhaps pick other lymph nodes in the arms
to remove if possible. Better quality of life would be
reached if doctors are aware this patient needs to be able
to play the piano after treatment. They would be more
careful to place ports or drains in locations that would
facilitate less harm to the patient.
Another way to learn about survivorship issues would
be to create more survivor support groups. When women
were diagnosed in this study, they recalled being given
information about several focus groups that could help
them deal with the issues they were having adjusting to
life with cancer. There could be more groups focused on
the issues women have post-cancer treatments. These
groups ought not to be focused on simply stating
grievances women have, because many patients stated they
did not want to feel sorry for themselves, but they should
focus on support from other patients who have been
through what they were now undergoing (Johnson, 2010).
Doctors and other health care professionals should interact
with the patients in order to ascertain what women need
in terms of support. It could be the case that some women
want hard facts about survival rates and statistics while
some patients want to be in a group setting where they can
talk about the issues they are having. Interaction with