It’s just a coincidence that the surgeon, medical oncologist and radiation oncologist who staff the Hospital of St. Raphael’s Women’s Center for Breast Health are all female, as is the social worker who helps patients in need apply for help with insurance coverage. That coincidence makes a difference for breast cancer patients like Lorna Gibbs (pictured).
The only staff member at the center for whom being female was part of the job description is the “patient navigator.”
The all-female roster has been a happy coincidence, according to those on both ends of the stethoscope.
Tochi Okeke was trained as a dentist in her native Nigeria. She switched to public health when she arrived in the U.S. and earned a master’s degree in that discipline at Southern Connecticut State University. After being hired in July as the patient navigator, she navigated her way to South Carolina to take a course offered in her new field to people from all over the country.
“There’s a need in the community that not only caters to the health needs of women but the personal needs they have in their homes and families,” said Okeke (pictured). “When you talk about breast cancer and all the things that can result, these are sensitive issues. The goal is to meet women at the point of an abnormal mammogram, and my role is to normalize their fears, break down in layman’s terms what exactly is going on, help facilitate their movement through the system, set up appointments, and as I interact with them I learn about struggles they are having personally which may impact their treatment and I bring this to the awareness of their physicians.
“The other interesting part is the multi-disciplinary conference that we hold here every week, where each woman’s case is presented to a group of doctors before any treatment is begun and they talk about what the possible management would be. A consensus is arrived at, and the physician who presented it brings that information back to the woman. Together they can chart a treatment plan.”
Gibbs, a New Haven resident, first came to the hospital in August, when she had an abnormal biopsy of her breast. Then she had a lumpectomy and stayed in the hospital overnight.
“When I woke up the next morning, Tochi was there,” she said, smiling. Click here to hear more of Gibbs’s thoughts on her all-women team, whose members “make it comfortable, because they know what you’re going through.”
As Gibbs and Okeke spoke in the Cancer Center’s lovely little chapel, Dr. Andrea Silber (at left in photo), the medical oncologist on the team, slipped in from her clinic duties to give a physician’s perspective on the breast health program. She greeted Gibbs warmly and assured her that everything would go smoothly when she started her chemotherapy the next day.
Silber said the key advantage in her opinion is not that the team is all-women, but that the team members collaborate so well.
“Maybe that’s something that being women, a collaborative kind of approach is a natural one. But I don’t think it’s natural to all women,” she added, “and there are certainly men that absolutely have that approach.”
The other team members are surgeon and center director Denise Barajas, and radiation oncologist Joyce Chung, who is co-director, along with Silber.
