Inside Duke Medicine

It’s all about our patients and their families

A rooftop garden area will allow patients to receive chemotherapy treatments outside overlooking a green space and a healing garden.

One of the most significant reflections of the new Cancer Center facility’s patient-focused approach to delivering care is its grouping of related services for the convenience of patients and their families.

With outpatient cancer services currently dispersed throughout Duke Clinics and Duke University Hospital, patients often invest additional time and energy in moving from one location to another. With the new Cancer Center facility, all of those services will be conveniently located in one patient-centric facility. To name a few:

Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, dieticians and others will work side-by-side to provide patients a full array of seamless, coordinated care. Clinical and support services like phlebotomy and radiology will be located within the facility, optimizing staff synergy as well as patient convenience. The breast and gynecology cancer clinics will be on the same floor to strengthen the women’s cancer programs. And the gastroenterology and thoracic cancer clinics will be co-located to further evolve the esophageal cancer program.

All of this will occur in a spacious and comfortable atmosphere in which every detail – big and small, down to paint, furniture and fabric selections – was selected with input from patients.

“Our patients and their families are the core of everything we do every day, and opportunities like the one the new building offers – to improve their experience, even in the smallest ways – are what the Duke experience is all about,” said Tracy Gosselin, RN, MSN, AOCN, assistant vice president and associate chief nursing officer, Oncology Services.

Among the Cancer Center facility’s many patient-focused amenities are a quiet room for personal reflection, a shop featuring cancer care products and services, and a rooftop garden that will allow patients to receive chemotherapy treatments outside overlooking a green space and healing garden.

“We’re putting a building in place that will allow us to efficiently and compassionately care for our patients,” said Louis Diehl, M.D., a medical oncologist with the Duke Cancer Institute. “It’s hard to say that you are going to make cancer care a pleasant experience, but the new building will enable us to make it more comfortable and address many more patient needs.”

One current challenge in the clinics is patient wait times, said Joseph Moore, M.D., a medical oncologist with the Duke Cancer Institute. “My hope is that services will be more efficient and streamlined in the new building due to the increased space and multidisciplinary approach.”

With its ability to focus on the full constellation of patients’ needs, the new facility also will streamline and coordinate patient access to information about participation in the Duke Cancer Institute’s cutting-edge clinical trials involving thousands of patients – one of the significant advantages of receiving cancer care at Duke and a key reason many patients choose Duke.

“We’re excited about the increased opportunity that the building and also the larger Duke Cancer Institute infrastructure will bring to the services we offer,” said Cheyenne Corbett, Ph.D., LMFT, director of the Duke Cancer Patient Support Program. “I think that once the facility matches the high level of care they receive here, patients will have even greater confidence in and satisfaction with the cancer services we provide at Duke.”

Read other articles from the special issue of Inside Duke Medicine on the Cancer Center facility.