- Here at Palms West Hospital,
I feel like we've done a very good job
in creating a really
comprehensive team approach.
I'm the physician who
takes care of the patient.
We also have
Pat Swayze, who's a pediatric
oncology nurse educator.
The moment a child gets
diagnosed, we have myself
or Pat spending a lot
of time with the family,
really educating them about the disease,
about the treatment,
about the side effects,
and really making sure they
learn this whole new language
and they learn about
the child's diagnosis.
We have dietitians, which
nutrition is very important.
We have any kind of sub-specialty
care the child may need,
whether it's infectious
disease, cardiology,
just to make sure that
we have those resources
in case we need them.
We work with the pediatric
oncology support team
who really does help doing
supportive care, school needs,
because many kids need
to come out of school
for some period of time during treatment.
We work with Kids Cancer
Foundation who also gives a lot
of supportive care, tries to
give families financial help,
and just the psychosocial
support just to make sure
that they're paying their bills
and that the siblings are doing okay,
and the parents are doing okay,
and that we're really looking
at the whole family unit.
Obviously the nurses
who are here everyday,
the nurses in our out-patient center,
it's the same team of nurses
so the parents really get
familiar with those nurses.
