AONN+ Conference Highlights
Shannon Miller – 7-time Olympic medalist and ovarian cancer survivor – encourages navigators at the eighth annual meeting of AONN+ saying just as an athlete doesn’t win an Olympic gold medal alone, a patient doesn’t beat cancer alone. It takes a team to succeed, and navigators are a vital part of that team.
Although there historically has been a gap in the literature regarding the key areas that measure the success of navigation programs, the Academy of Oncology Nurse & Patient Navigators (AONN+) evidence-based oncology navigation metrics are making strides in closing that gap.
Navigating patients through the complexities of breast cancer is a unique challenge, but cross-collaboration between breast patient navigators and oncology nurse navigators can make a world of difference in improving patient care.
At the AONN+ West Coast Regional Meeting, Standardized Navigation Task Force members Tricia Strusowski and Cheryl Bellomo discuss the metrics and provide tools to employ in their implementation.
Community navigators help those with an unequal burden of cancer, which is often heaviest among racial/ethnic minorities, patients with lower socioeconomic status, and residents of rural areas who do not have equal access to healthcare systems and do not always receive timely, standard care when confronted with a cancer diagnosis.
Although the term “navigator” is still fairy new and its many definitions are still being established, a growing awareness of navigators and the substantial role they play in patient care has underlined the need for role delineation in the field.
Financial toxicity can be long lasting, and the extent to which patients are affected often depends on when in the time of their benefit year they are diagnosed.
According to Lillie Shockney, Program Director and Cofounder of AONN+, a silo mentality is an inward-looking mindset that commonly occurs in healthcare organizations. Individuals operating in this manner resist sharing information and resources with other people or departments within the organization and conclude that it is not their responsibility to coordinate their activities with peers or other groups.
Nancy Sayegh-Rooney, RN, Pulmonary Nurse Navigator and Certified Tobacco Specialist Counselor at Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island, New York, leads a 6-week smoking cessation class in the spring and fall that is free and open to the community.
AONN+ presenter Tricia Strusowski, MS, RN, offers advice and tools for navigators starting out in this burgeoning, but often daunting field.
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