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Navigating Care After a New Cancer Diagnosis

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OncoLink
Last Modified: January 7, 2013

Question

What tips can you give a person with a new diagnosis on how to best navigate care, keep everything straight and go through treatment?

Answer

Linda Miller, RN, BSN, Oncology Nurse Navigator at Penn Medicine responds:

You can look to see if the institution where you would be receiving treatment had a patient or nurse navigator who can help guide you through the process. In addition it can be very helpful to use a 3 ring binder to organize your information for office visits. If you carry it with you to appointments, you can write notes from each visit as well as write down questions that you might have for the doctor while at your visit. You can keep copies of your visit notes, medications, scan and lab reports in it as well in the event that someone needed records for review. It is also good to print out a calendar page to write all the appointments in and keep it as part of the binder. You can store the different physician cards as well as treatment facility information detailing additional services available and how to contact them.

Get blank forms to create your binder on OncoPilot!

This question and answer was part of the OncoLink Brown Bag Chat Series. View the entire transcript from the Focus on Lung Cancer Webchat.