Patient FAQs

This happens nearly every day, doesn’t it? A newly diagnosed patient with cancer wants to know the odds of living through and beyond his or her cancer treatment. It doesn’t matter if we tell patients that we hope they live a long time and not to focus on stats; they focus on them anyway. But when it comes to statistics, there are some important facts for nurse navigators to consider.

As part of our responsibility as navigators, we are expected to not just know the standards of care but also remain up to date on cutting-edge research that has recently been published. We are also confronted with patients or their loved ones who have spent hours on the Internet visiting many websites—some credible academic websites and others bogus websites that may look credible but aren’t—and they assume that any new research found on the Internet related to the type of cancer they have or even in a magazine for that matter is valid and is suddenly the new standard of care.