How does the support of a network of family and friends help patients facing serious illness?

“Family members and other support systems can really help patients by buoying them through a scary time. These connections make patients feel cared for and comforted in a way that can diminish feelings of isolation. Family and friends engage the patient in life beyond cancer in a meaningful way, with children and grandchildren or with their passions in life, be it work, hobbies or just getting out into nature. Therapeutic research shows that a supportive, caring presence diminishes anxiety and depression, buttressing an overall sense of wellbeing.”

What services does City of Hope offer to help support patients?

“City of Hope really looks at the patient and family as multifaceted — physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and existentially — and we focus on all of those features. This care ethic drew me to City of Hope.

Our approach is unique — there’s nowhere else in the country with a supportive care medicine department like ours that houses almost every resource you could possibly need to support the patient and family through this very challenging time. We have social work, psychology, psychiatry, pain and palliative medicine, child-life services, spiritual care and education services all housed together and working toward the unified goal of offering seamless integrative care for patients and families in need.

The Sheri & Les Biller Patient and Family Resource Center spans beyond the medical-model approach, where the patient- and family-centered care ethic is more pronounced. They focus on patient and family education, as well as offering complementary and holistic therapies to enhance overall well-being. When you have cancer, there are so many unknowns that can breed anxiety and depression. If we can give patients and families knowledge and be a comforting presence, this diminishes the sense of isolation and the unknown.

The center also offers activities to ease the mind, body and spirit. They offer yoga classes, massage therapy and music therapy, as well as the Positive Image Center. They’re always thinking about new and different multidimensional ways of reaching out and touching patients.

For instance, the Hope Network is a new pilot program that connects patients with survivors who mentor them. The survivors are the teachers. They are the ones who have lived the cancer experience, so they can convey very practical information such as what to expect from cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. It’s a great opportunity for survivors to help shepherd new cancer patients and families through their challenging journey — to let them know that they are not alone and there is hope.

You mentioned “reaching out and touching patients.” What is the value of touch for patients?

“Most of my clinical, teaching and research initiatives have been focused on the multidimensional nature of touch — touching on and beyond the skin. I’m interested in what it means to touch patients’ lives. The physical element of touch itself promotes overall physical, mental and emotional well-being. When we extend that touch beyond the skin through nonphysical modalities like therapeutic conversation, music or art, this may make the patient feel even more meaningfully engaged and connected with life during an anxietyevoking time.

The essence of meaningoriented therapeutic work is getting patients to connect with what is most meaningful to them in their lives. A great deal of my work is centered on assessing what brings a patient home — to their existential, spiritual home — and delivering an intervention that helps bring them to that authentic, comforting place. Everybody’s access point for being at home in the world is different, so meaningfully touching patients’ lives becomes a creative process.

That’s something else that drew me to City of Hope. As a psychologist, I have the unique opportunity to work with patients and families, as well as develop new integrative programs to meet their needs, and teach clinicians how to identify and treat existential-spiritual issues across the lifespan in cancer care. Truly meaningful work.

Psychologists have so much to offer a comprehensive cancer center. I wish more cancer centers were like City of Hope and understood the value of psychologists who are uniquely trained to offer excellent clinical care, as well as novel teaching and programmatic initiatives. We’re here, and we look forward to doing more to help our patients and families in need.”