Examining the Role of the Physician Assistant in Follicular Lymphoma

Jennifer L. Garson, PA-C, a physician assistant from Rush Health in Chicago, broke down her role in the oncology care team, as well as the roles of others she works with, and how they all must collaborate well to optimize outcomes. Garson spoke with CancerNetwork^® during an Around the Practice^® interview, where she discussed how she helps patients better understand their situation during therapy.

She also highlighted how she can help to advocate for her patients to have an improved quality of life while receiving treatment for follicular lymphoma. Garson closely works with oncologists, radiation oncologists, nurse navigators, and infusion nurses in her day-to-day practice.

Transcript:

As a physician assistant, I work with a team [of professionals]. I do work with a physician, and we have other advanced practice providers on our team. We have radiation oncologists, hematopathologists, nurse navigators, and infusion nurses, [who] are a huge part of how we can care for patients. As a physician assistant, I’m the person that the patient probably sees the most during their course of treatment. At our institution, I’ve been in my role for quite a bit of time now, so I have a little bit of experience where I am seeing patients in the relapse setting and talking about some options for treatment, maybe even before our physician gets to them. My role with them is to be a friend holding their hand through this, but also being the expert for them, interpreting some of the data and some of the information that the physician is bringing to them, and helping them tease out what is best for them at that point in their life. [For many patients], quality of life is a huge issue, especially for a disease that you’re not curing. In talking to them, it’s figuring out: what are their expectations and what are our expectations, finding collaboration, and then involving the rest of the team and [figuring out] how they’ll also be incorporated into this, whether it be our radiation team, our nurse navigators helping with some education pieces, or our infusion nurses who are helping to manage some of the therapies.