What can nurses do to better help you?

I guess, but I'm not sure, that because you posted your question and the male breast Cancer discussion board, your question might be better described as, "What can nurses due to better help male breast cancer patients?"

Having become what best can be described as they 56-year-old male breast cancer survivor, I can say that I've met a lot of nurses since my radical mastectomy last February. In fact, the oncology laboratory that I now visit once a week for chemotherapy has a different RN student nurse in training every week.

The best answer that I can come up with is that nurses should not treat male breast cancer patients on a different than any other patients. Nurses should bring the same level of caring, observation, support, and attention to detail to any male breast cancer patient that they bring to any other patient.

I have met a lot of nurses over the last several months, some stellar performers, and a few that missed the mark for a wide variety of reasons. Seeing as my wife is an RN at a local hospital, working in a stroke recovery unit, I guess I have a little special insight into what nurses do. Offering excellent patient care can sometimes be overshadowed by bureaucratic nonsense, overbearing relatives, hospital politics, and other factors that detract from the main objective. I guess my best advice would be for nursing students to plan and maintaining and focus to set all those distractions aside and concentrate on the patient at hand. Always try to imagine yourself in their shoes.

Best of luck.