A breast cancer diagnosis can bring overwhelming questions. What happens next? Which doctors should you see? How quickly can treatment begin? And who can help you navigate the process?
In this video, we explore how breast cancer patient navigation helps connect patients with the care, guidance, and emotional support they need following a diagnosis.
Through the personal story of a breast cancer patient, Lauren, and her navigator, Katrina, we see how coordinated care can help patients move from diagnosis to specialized evaluation and treatment planning.
The video highlights how patient navigators help coordinate appointments, connect patients with specialists, and support communication among surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, and pathologists. By bringing these specialists together through a multidisciplinary approach, patients can receive a more coordinated care experience.
Topics covered include:
- What a breast cancer patient navigator does
- How patient navigation supports patients after a positive biopsy
- Coordinating appointments and access to specialists
- The role of multidisciplinary teams in breast cancer care
- The importance of emotional support and clear communication throughout the cancer journey
For one patient, Katrina was more than someone who scheduled appointments. She was a steady source of reassurance during one of life’s most uncertain moments.
Lauren is a patient of Breastlink, RadNet’s breast care centers.
Transcript
0:01 Went in that Tuesday and she actually didn’t have to tell me. She just looked at me. I’m like, “I know. I know.”
0:09 When these patients initially get the first call that they have cancer, you automatically go in this mode of like, “What am I going to do?
0:16 Where am I going to go? Who am I going to seek advice?
0:23 Who am I going to speak to? Who’s knowledgeable?”
0:34 And then she followed up with, “If you have some time right now, I have a woman on the phone named Katrina. She might have an appointment for you this week.
0:42 If you have time right now, can you talk to her?” And was like, “I will make whatever time is necessary right now.”
0:50 Well, a lot of patients feel lost. They don’t have a clear plan. I help navigate patients who come in through our path portal with positive paths or high-risk pathologies and we help navigate them and help expedite their care.
0:58 When they hear the word cancer, most of the times the provider would like to be on the phone with the navigator and having that discussion.
1:10 Obviously, if they don’t have a preferred surgeon, you know, it’s nice to know that we can tell them that we have a streamline approach to helping our patients get expedited care within a week’s time, which is very unheard of.
1:23 Sometimes the biomarkers aren’t even back yet, and we have already have an appointment set with our Cedars care team for these patients to be seen.
1:30 But it really took a lot of trial and error working with providers, educating them, saying, “Hey, we have this great program that your patient came back with cancer.
1:38 If you don’t have a preferred surgeon, we can get them seen by Dr. DeStefano within a week’s time.
1:46 Hey, we can even do medical oncology and radiation oncology depending on the cancer in one day in one building.”
1:53 Katrina coordinated and got me an appointment with Dr. DeStefano 2 days later.
2:02 And just the way she described everything and listened to all my questions, like I felt seen, I felt heard.
2:09 I didn’t feel like I was being brushed off as just another cancer patient. Well, breast cancer has touched my family.
2:17 So, I’ve had my mother, my sister-in-law have endured it. They’re now 8 years in remission and in survivorship.
2:25 I myself had cervical cancer. So when Breastlink had this position there for breast navigation, I’m like this is my job.
2:34 This is, this is my, this is my position.
2:37 You know, making them feel confident, supported, making them feel like they’ve been empowered instead of feeling like they were overwhelmed.
2:46 I think with cancer care, it’s really hard to have fragmented care. I really see us as a team here. It’s not just me. It’s not just the medical oncologist.
2:54 It’s not just the radiation oncologist, right? The whole team. So once they have that biopsy, if it ends up being a malignancy, then the navigation process with Cedars starts.
3:02 Their referring provider opts into our program. They’re navigated directly into our office. So from that point on, our office really helps to manage any additional appointments, any additional imaging, any additional biopsies, sort of navigating through their whole care.
3:16 Once their workup is complete, we have them come back for our multidisciplinary clinic. And at that point, the whole team meets. So that’s the surgeon, the medical oncologist, the radiation oncologist and the radiologist as well as the pathologist.
3:24 So we do a whole tumor board and go over their entire case and come up with a plan.
3:31 And then in that same day, the patient comes back and meets the entire team. And yes, she is present in their tumor boards because I think it’s important for her to know what the physicians are talking about because they are the point person for the patient.
3:40 I’ve had only really good feedback from the patients that they’re like, you know, I got contacted from the navigator at RadNet and they set me up with you guys and now everything has been sort of seamless.
3:48 Katrina really kind of held down the emotional fort for me.
3:57 Whether she knew it or not, she did. And I’m eternally grateful for that alone.
4:06 You have to be okay with understanding that, okay, right now there are things I don’t know, but I have this team that’s going to help target all of this information and clarify it.
4:13 So, that was really what Katrina did.
4:21 She facilitated clarifying the unknowns. My manager came to me and said she was at a Cedars convention, and that at the very end of the convention a woman walked up to her and said, “Thank you for saving my life.”
4:37 And my manager was, “Well, you’re welcome, but may I ask who you are?” And she says, “Well, I’m a breast cancer survivor, and I went through the program, and Katrina was my navigator.”
4:45 It’s just so wonderful to know that there’s a happy ending to this story.
4:52 But actually meeting Katrina, like, it was only by the phone that I was ever able to communicate with her. So, it was actually nice to meet her and thank her, which is you take that for granted sometimes.
5:05 The one thing I do say is awareness is the key to prevention. If there’s one sign or indication that they may feel that there’s something wrong with their breast, reach out to your provider.
5:13 Make that contact. Go with your gut intuition.