Something new is coming to the Scully-Welsh Cancer Center and it has nothing to do with test tubes, lasers, scalpels, molecular or genomic research, advanced chemotherapy techniques or multimillion-dollar scanning equipment.
Instead, this new arrival is all about people. It’s called “palliative care” and it’s not what most people think it is.
For many, the phrase “palliative care” conjures images of late-stage cancer patients being made as comfortable as possible in end-of-life situations. But it turns out that image is faulty.
According to WebMD, “palliative care is actually a new medical specialty that has recently emerged. It’s not the same as hospice. It doesn’t serve only the dying. Instead, it focuses more broadly on improving life and providing comfort to people of all ages with serious, chronic and life-threatening illnesses.”
Dr. James Grichnik, director of the Vero Beach cancer center, says, “The general idea is really taking care of the whole patient. Humans have a lot more needs than just treating their cancer, so palliative care really is gaining a lot of traction now. How do we take care of the whole patient, the whole human being? How do we make this tough, anxiety-driven, scary process more palatable?”
The vast majority of America’s medical schools now have palliative care programs teaching medical students and residents. According to WebMD, “that didn’t occur 10 years ago. There was literally no education occurring on this topic,” but today fully 80 percent of U.S. hospitals with more than 300 beds have palliative care programs.
Scully-Welsh will soon be joining that group; to lead that effort, Grichnik and Scully-Welsh have turned to Dr. Patrick Judson.
A graduate of Washington, D.C.’s George Washington University’s undergraduate and medical schools, the soft-spoken Judson has been a hematologist and oncologist since 1983 and is now beginning to lay the building blocks for a top-notch palliative care program at Scully-Welsh.
“Palliative care,” explains Judson, “really just means treating people like they’re people and trying to take care of their problems. It starts from the minute they walk into the clinic. They don’t have to be terminal. Many people are not anywhere near being terminal. They’re going to be cured of their cancer, but they’ve still got a lot of problems: depression, anxiety, they might have pain or whatever. You have to help them with all of those problems. That’s what we are going to do here from the beginning.”
Judson envisions building a multidisciplinary team to coordinate care and says some of those team members are already in place – the center’s doctors, registered nurses, nurse-navigators, dietitians, physical or occupational therapist, and pharmacists. Others including psychologists and chaplains will likely be involved as well.
Faced with such a massive team-building task, Judson pauses briefly and then essentially doubles his own work load.
“There’s also the Indian River Medical Center,” Judson continues, “they recognize there’s an un-met need for palliative care there as well and we’re starting to work on that. We would like to develop a program here for the whole community.”
That’s a tall order.
There’s a long list of difficult, non-cancerous diseases whose victims from could benefit greatly from a fully-functioning palliative care program, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, an entire panoply of kidney diseases along with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and dozens more.
And it’s not only the patients who could benefit. Support services may include educating family members in greater detail about the patient’s illness, helping to arrange time off for family caregivers as well as help with meals and shopping.
The plain fact is that financial and legal worries, insurance questions, employment and transportation concerns don’t just put themselves on hold while patients recover from diseases.
Judson very briefly chokes up a bit before adding, “I feel strongly that besides just taking care of the disease, you have to take care of the whole person, which includes their family and their loved ones.”
He knows that all too well from personal experience. He lost his mother to breast cancer in 1993 and his sister-in-law has recently been diagnosed with ALS.
Judson sums up his personal approach to the task at hand in simple terms. “We’re all just human beings trying to make it through this world. You are not a disease. You’re a human being.”
Judson’s job is seeing to it you’re treated that way.
The Scully-Welsh Cancer Center is adjacent to the Indian River Medical Center. For more information, the phone number is 772-226-3762.
