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Conference Coverage

Support for Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer

12/27/2023

In this video, Abbey J. Kaler, MS, APRN, FNP-C, speaks about the importance of individualized patient navigation, support groups for patients, and managing the comorbidities of patients living with advanced disease. She also discussed these topics during a session at SABCS 2022 titled “Support for Patients With MBC.”

Additional Resource:

  • Kaler AJ. Support for patients with MBC. Talk presented at: San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2022; December 6-10, 2022; San Antonio, Texas. Accessed December 15, 2022. https://www.sabcs.org/

Abbey J. Kaler, MS, APRN, FNP-C

Abbey J. Kaler, MS, APRN, FNP-C, is the supervisor advanced practice provider at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the advanced breast cancer program (Houston, TX).

 

TRANSCRIPTION:

Abbey J Kaler, MS, APRN, FNP-C: My name is Abbey Kaler, and I am the supervisor advanced practice provider at MD Anderson Cancer Center, leading the Advanced Breast Cancer Program.

This was a wonderfully attended session at San Antonio, in which I shared the wonderful work that the Advanced Breast Cancer Program has completed over the last five years in order to build a comprehensive program to support our patients living with advanced and metastatic breast cancer. We talked about the importance of offering individualized patient navigation, the importance of support groups for our patients, both in the group environment as well as individual peer-to-peer matching. I shared the wonderful work that we've done in our LIMBS clinic, Linking Internal Medicine and Metastatic Breast Cancer for Success, making sure that we're treating the comorbidities of our patients living with advanced disease.

We have an IRB-approved registry to really look at the demographic and the clinical data of our patients that will help us design future quality of life trials, as well as an educational webinar that we hold every Friday that offers our patients access to different presenters every week, talking about topics related to the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

Take-home messages:

Abbey J Kaler, MS, APRN, FNP-C: First of all, they were just so amazed in that a program like the exists and the advocacy for future institutions to build similar programs, and really asking for our next presentation to be lessons learned and how to actually implement a program and to essentially create a roadmap to do so.

The idea of the Advanced Breast Cancer Program was created by patients, patients living with metastatic breast cancer, and that they remain at the core of everything that we do today. It really is their voice that we are able to carry through in all of our initiatives.

Thank you for having me.