Want to learn exactly what an accredited Breast Center is. We're gonna teach you all about it.
When you're diagnosed with breast cancer
you will get the best care when your breast specialists work together as a team, to attack your breast cancer and
this team approach is the foundation of an NAPBC nationally accredited breast centers,
and is the future of quality,
comprehensive breast cancer care. In this lesson we will teach you what an NAPBC accredited Breast Center is, and why a
multidisciplinary breast cancer team is so important for you to get quality breast cancer care and
why a patient navigator is so helpful to you.
I'll also teach you how to find an NAPBC accredited Breast Center in your area.
So let's get started. What is an accredited Breast Center?
Think of a Breast Center as a place where your breast specialists work together as a team
to focus solely on you, to get you the very best breast cancer outcome. A Breast Center can be a free-standing
building which is actually somewhat uncommon, but
most of the time a Breast Center is located within a hospital or hospital system
and
there's some
offices and services in one place and other services are utilized that might be located elsewhere. An NAPBC
accredited Breast Center includes a number of things, most importantly a multidisciplinary team of
breast surgeons, medical oncologist, radiation oncologists, radiologists, plastic surgeons, pathologists
to focus on you to make sure we're not missing anything and make sure we add in every possible option for treating your cancer
as
important as that,
multidisciplinary team for you
Is a patient navigator, "a breast center patient navigator"
who knows how to walk you through this journey going to different doctors and different
treatments, in and out of the hospital
Which is arduous and frustrating in and of itself. A patient navigator
also can guide you to services and help identify
things that you might need, that your physicians may not think about or have the time to address. A
Breast Center
also has supportive services: an array of them, such as
lymphedema therapy or physical therapy or nutrition or psychological help for many that go through this difficult
long journey of breast cancer treatment.
So an NAPBC, "Nationally Accredited Program for Breast Centers," accredited Breast Center, has met all of the criteria
and guidelines that show that they are providing excellent quality,
organized and
multidisciplinary breast cancer care. What is a Multidisciplinary
Breast Cancer Team? Well breast cancer treatment can be complicated.
Most times
decision processes for
early-stage breast cancer are fairly straightforward although there are some twists and turns that a
Multidisciplinary team can bring to the table to help a patient and improve their choices and outcomes.
But especially when you have a complicated breast cancer situation,
pulling everyone together as a team tossing out ideas, bringing up new cutting-edge
advances, offering clinical trials, offering other services or people have seen different aspects of a patient from a different perspective.
Meaning your surgeons talking to your medical oncologist who is talking to your radiation oncologist.
The radiation oncologist wants to see the patient before surgery because it's a big tumor. They're not sure how big it will be
after they finish chemotherapy.
We learn from one another and so your breast specialists, when they're engaged in a multidisciplinary team, in
my opinion, I started a Breast Center years ago, I became a better doctor, a better physician.
I knew more when I learned from my colleagues. Being a surgeon,
I learned about medical oncology aspects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, I learned from the other surgeons
And I learned from the radiation oncologist and the nurses and the patient navigator.
And when you put people that are dedicated to learning more each day,
Rather than just sitting in their office, doing their thing, and passing patients along...
You benefit in the end if you get your care with a team it works together with others and
That is why a multidisciplinary team is the
foundation and the heart of an accredited Breast Center. What is a Breast Patient Navigator?
Well every accredited Breast Center has a breast patient navigator,
Who is your personal advocate from diagnosis,
through your entire treatment
within that Breast Center.
Think of a patient navigator as someone that is specially trained, that knows the pathway and the different steps of breast cancer care.
Surgery, to chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, radiation therapy and everything in between
they are your
Concierge service to navigate through to your doctors get appointments, by calling the "back line,"
they know how to do it. They know how to expedite getting
MRI's, CT-Scans, bone scans and other services. They also talk to you on a different level than your doctors.
They really get to know you and sometimes patients share with the patient navigator more than they share with the doctors or
the patient navigator identifies problem or needs for a patient the doctors don't. So a
patient navigator works with your physicians and your
Multidisciplinary team to make sure you get the very best care possible in your community. How do I find an
NAPBC accredited breast center?
Well, you know as well as I, it's very easy to look something up on the phone or the computer and you can google the
terms.
What I would suggest is that you work to find where
in your community, you have a Breast Center and a group of people working together.
I think some of the red flags are if you're in a community, and there's a Breast Center, but a doctor that's not
participating when they have the opportunity to,
It's worth asking them, "Why they don't participate in the Breast Center?"
And if they kind of feel like a breast center is not helpful, or it doesn't add much,
in my opinion, it's a bit of a red flag for the quality of care that you will get with that physician. So,
you're savvy enough to look and find breast centers and accredited breast centers
But if you have a choice between an accredited Breast Center and something that's called a Breast Center,
The "take-home message" is, pick the accredited Breast Center. To learn more about NAPBC accredited Breast Centers.
visit the Breast Cancer School for Patients. We teach you everything you need to know.
We're here to help you get the best possible breast cancer care in your community.
Register on our website to get our list of questions to prepare you for your next doctor visit.