Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a harsh light on a critical deficiency in our health care system: our inability to access important information about patients' values, goals, and preferences in the electronic health record (EHR). At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), we have integrated and systematized health-related values discussions led by oncology nurses for newly diagnosed cancer patients as part of routine comprehensive cancer care. Such conversations include not only the patient's wishes for care at the end of life but also more holistic personal values, including sources of strength, concerns, hopes, and their definition of an acceptable quality of life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: High-quality cancer care must incorporate patients' personal values in decision making throughout illness. Unfortunately, patient values are neither consistently elicited nor easily accessible in the electronic health record (EHR). Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is deploying a major EHR innovation, called the Patient Values Tab, which provides ready access to patients' values and personhood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOBJECTIVE To describe the utilization of electronic medical data resources, including health records and nursing scheduling resources, to conduct a tuberculosis (TB) exposure investigation in a high-risk oncology unit. SETTING A 42-bed inpatient unit with a mix of surgical and medical patients at a large tertiary-care cancer center in New York City. PARTICIPANTS High-risk subjects and coworkers exposed to a healthcare worker (HCW) with cavitary smear positive lung TB.
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