Why Myeloma Patients Should Speak Up: Advice from a Nurse Practitioner
Why Myeloma Patients Should Speak Up: Advice from a Nurse Practitioner from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Speaking up, or self-advocating, may influence a myeloma patient’s health outcome. Charise Gleason provides a brief explanation of why patients should ask questions and seek advice from their healthcare team without hesitation.
Charise Gleason is a nurse practitioner specializing in myeloma and serves as the Advanced Practice Provider Chief at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Learn more about Charise, here.
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Transcript:
Charise:
I think for patients it’s important to ask questions. I think sometimes they feel like, “I’m sorry I’m asking this,” or, “I’m sorry I’m telling you all about my side effects.” And that’s what’s supposed to happen at our visits.
So, I think patients and their family members or caregivers are their best advocate. And they should never feel bad about asking questions, reaching our, reminding their team of things, and being that advocate. We know about side effects. And we know about these treatments. And we can tell them, but we’re not experiencing them. So, there’s nothing that’s too small. And with everything we do, come some sort of side effect. So, it’s really a team approach to manage these things. And you never want patients to be suffering through. And reaching out to your team, even between visits, is really important.
Writing things down. Coming to a visit with a list of questions. These visits go quickly and if you come with those five things you really want to ask, or more… But have them written down so you don’t miss it in your visit so you feel like you’re part of that discussion and you’re getting the information that you need.
