Message From the Administrator
Welcome to the Fall issue of “Together We Can,” the newsletter
of the Joan Karnell Cancer Center at Pennsylvania
Hospital. In this issue, we are focusing on supportive
care for oncology patients and families. We are
very excited to share with you the new electronic system of symptom
assessment called Aim Higher.
We hope
that this will streamline and improve our methods
of assessing symptoms related to cancer and its treatment and, in
the long term, allow us to improve our methods of anticipating and
treating those symptoms.
An automatic referral can be made to many of
our supportive care team, including nutrition,
social work and psychology, when high levels
of distress are reported. This allows us to focus
our resources on those with the highest and most
urgent need. This system also allows us to look
at the data collected, which is important in
helping develop new programs and services as
well as research projects. We are always interested
in your feedback on this initiative and any others.
It has been a busy and productive summer at
the Cancer Center. Among other projects, the
staff has undertaken the task of updating our
mission statement and expanding that statement
to include our values, words that describe principles,
standards, or qualities considered worthwhile
or desirable. The words that were chosen by the
staff to represent the values of the Joan Karnell
Cancer Center are:
- Patient and family centered
- Interdisciplinary
- Supportive
- Caring
- Committed
We hope that these values are apparent to you,
our patients, when you come in contact with our
staff.
Sincerely,
Mary Pat Lynch, CRNP, MSN, AOCN
Administrator, Joan Karnell Cancer Center
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