Coaching for Success

Mesothelioma is a serious disease and can be distressing for patients, families, and loved ones.

Every member of the International Mesothelioma Program staff knows this – knows how unsettling, disorienting, and frightening it is and how difficult is the journey through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

In addition to being highly competent, IMP staff members are also highly compassionate. In fact, compassion and caring is as important a part of our program as patient care and research are.

Patients and families will meet and get to know dozens of IMP staff members – from patient navigators to physical therapists, from surgeons to social workers, from nurses to nutritionists. Each of them is highly trained. And each has an appreciation of what patients and families are going through.

Many of these staff members will become coaches for part of each patient’s journey:

• The physical therapist who cajoles a patient into taking “just five more steps” each day on the special thoracic walker
• The social worker who paves the way for a patient to get additional services
• The navigator who guides patients through a complicated health care system
• The physician whose “game plan” for every patient includes:
• taking a walk every day
• eating lots of protein and potassium-rich foods such as bananas and potatoes
• taking a daily multivitamin and magnesium
• and, above all, keeping your spirits up and remaining positive
• The IMP director who offers a kind word in a hallway.