What can nurses do to better help you?

I am a nurse and the mother of a daughter with liver cancer. Do you mean as far as care in the hospital?

Kitchell said:

I mean in any setting where your daughter (or you) is under the care of a nurse.

As far as my input,as a mom, we needed the doctor and nurse to be our advocate and find the best providers etc. We didn't know a thing about liver cancer -hers is rare. We were so taken aback as my youngest sister had just died a few months earlier from breast cancer. 4 years before, my dad died from larygeal cancer. Even though I am a nurse, I couldn't think straight. I will share a few things that helped us. First of all,it's important to know what kind of insurance a patient has. I never realized this when I did patient care in the hospital. I am glad we did not have an HMO. I chose the more expensive insurance to give us the choice to go anywhere at a higher out of pocket. Because of this, our internal medicine doctor found us the best liver surgeon. A general surgeon had recommended and scheduled liver biopsy after they found the tumor. But the liver surgeon told our internal med doc to cancel the biopsy, because if it was malignant it would spread cells. He told her the tumor had to be removed anyway and he would just do all of the biopsies and pathology when he resected it. It was malignant. So I guess my point is -do some research on behalf of the patient. Also, our nurses were great about not ever making us wait -they knew we were scared to death with our 22 year old daughter. They also were encouraging for us to be realistic but optimistic. They all seemed to have faith - and were so calm and compassionate. And they all believe in miracles. The most frustrating thing is when a nurse doesn't respond to a question or concern. I will ask my daughter what she thinks and post it this week-end. She is doing very well. I am sorry this is so long, but I learned a lot from this as well. If anything helps someone else, that would be great.