Registered Nurse Navigator RN

Nurse Navigator

The Nurse Navigator assists the patient in plotting a course through the often-complicated health care system. The Navigator is an allied health professional licensed as a registered nurse by the State of Michigan. Serves as the main point of contact for men and women entering the health system with a diagnosis of lung, hepatobiliary, or GI/colorectal cancer. Coordinates multidisciplinary care from the time of diagnosis throughout treatment with a focus on ensuring timely access to care.

Provides education to the patient on their diagnosis, treatment options, management of side effects, clinical trials, and shared decision making. Enhances the patient's understanding of treatment options available and interprets medical information. Facilitates the care plan recommendations by the physician. Psychosocial support is provided to the patient, family, and caregivers by identifying barriers to care and connecting with intervention resources.

Serves as a patient advocate to ensure their voice is heard. Identifies special needs of the patient and delegates to the appropriate support staff. Assists the patient moving from active cancer treatment into survivorship developing a care and surveillance plan. Serves as a resource for the community on health issues, prevention, screening, treatment, research and participates in community and CME events.

Responsibilities

• Assist patients with navigation of the health system from the point of diagnosis through their courses of treatment. Educates patients and families on their medical condition, individual plan of care, and use of prescribed treatment/medications. Coordinate patient care with other treatment team members. Possess an in-depth knowledge of cancer diagnoses/disease processes and treatment options. Coordinate appointments for consultations and physician visits.
  
  In collaboration with ordering providers, the navigator may assist with the disclosure of biopsy and surgical pathology results and enter additional referrals as needed.
• Develop relationships with referring providers and educate them on the role of patient navigation and the assistance that can be provided by the Nurse Navigator. Maintain two-way communications with provider offices in order to improve processes of coordinating and streamlining care for all referred patients. The nurse navigator provides information to the tumor registry for cancer conferences. The nurse navigator completes the cancer conference notes in the patient medical record and follows up with recommendations made by ordering any additional testing, disclosing test results and making referrals as directed.
• Develop standardized documentation for the navigation program. Maintain accurate, complete and timely documentation of all encounters with patients and provide data/reports as needed on the navigation program. Ongoing evaluation of patients' health status, utilizing appropriate resources as needed.
• Identify and develop resources to meet the educational and psychosocial needs of patients. Connect patients with supportive services that are available through My Michigan Health and in the community.
• Provides survivorship care plans to patients and the care team upon completion of treatment with a follow up surveillance plan for all patients with the intent for a curative diagnosis.

Other duties and responsibilities include:

• Work with other My Michigan Health team members to develop QA measures for the program to assist in streamlining the path of care for patients from diagnosis through treatment.
• Participate in multidisciplinary performance improvement teams.
• Supports the organization and program by working with the tumor registry and multidisciplinary team to monitor metrics for meeting the CoC (Commission on Cancer) and NAPRC (National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer) standards for accreditation through the American College of Surgeons.
• Have a presence in both the professional and general communities to ensure high visibility of the My Michigan Health navigation program.
• Supports the purpose of the organization by Creating Healthy Communities – Together.
• Responsible for outreach efforts to establish and…