Caring Ambassadors Lung Cancer Program Supports Patients and Caregivers

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Caregiver Choices is a resource for all those who find themselves in the role of caregiver for someone who has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Caregiver Choices is a resource for all those who find themselves in the role of caregiver for someone who has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

A life-changing illness brings much more than the symptoms of a disease. Challenges and potential opportunities arise as well. New perspectives, values, and inspiration can emerge if they are welcomed and fostered. For example, an unexpected illness and a stroke of inspiration gave rise to the Caring Ambassadors Program.

In 1993, Ken Giddes was diagnosed with lung cancer. After an extensive period of treatment, Ken’s cancer appeared to be in remission. As Ken reflected on his experience, he pondered how to use his experience to benefit others. With a strong belief in the power of people helping people, Ken and his employer, Jim Possehl of Republic Financial Corporation came up with the idea of a program to help people struggling with life-threatening illnesses get the support, help, and information they needed. In 1997, Ken and his employer turned their inspiration into reality. The Caring Ambassadors Program was founded at the same time as its first disease-specific program, the Caring Ambassadors Lung Cancer Program.

Ken spent the last years of his life working as a Lung Cancer Caring Ambassador, giving talks about his experiences and being empathetic and encouraging to others who were facing it. Later, his cancer returned and Ken died in January 2001. However, the work he believed in and passionately dedicated himself to goes on.

One of the most meaningful results of Ken’s inspiration was the creation of Lung Cancer Choices, a patient-focused book that provides information about lung cancer to help people make decisions about their treatment for lung cancer treatment. Lung Cancer Choices is free to download from the Caring Ambassadors Lung Cancer Program website.

This downloadable booklet, Caregiver Choices, is a companion to Lung Cancer Choices. It focuses on the caregiver, and all that the caregiver might face supporting a loved one with lung cancer.

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For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, an expert on CLL
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, and Josie Montegaard, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, experts on CLL
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