Restoring Quality to Cancer Patients’ Lives: Integrating Wellness Care into Oncology

For cancer patients, maintaining quality of life during and following treatment can be an ongoing challenge. At GBMC’s Sandra & Malcolm Berman Cancer Institute, the team at the Integrative Wellness Center is ready to help patients achieve their goals and lessen the side effects of their disease and treatment.  

The individualized care provided at the Berman Cancer Institute is essential, and a key to the services offered in the Integrative Wellness Center.

“A cancer patient is often dealing with more than cancer,” Advanced Oncology Practitioner Suki Parks, PA-C, PhD, said. “Many have had a lifetime of other issues that can complicate the experience.”

Parks and Mind-Body Specialist, Lolly Forsythe-Chisolm, MS, provide cancer patients with tools to improve their wellness and help manage pain and other symptoms. As members of the patient’s oncology care team, they provide access to evidence-based holistic treatment that is integrated with the cancer care the patient is receiving. Both women find the work deeply rewarding.  

“I love hearing people are improving,” Parks said. “A lot of people come to us in really serious pain, and we are able to help them improve the quality of their life."

That improvement extends beyond management of physical symptoms, such as treatment of pain.

“We can help with the emotional impact of a cancer diagnosis as well. If you are in pain and anxious, you cannot sleep,” she said. “In many cases, we can help relieve symptoms and improve coping.”  

Forsythe-Chisolm teaches patients mindfulness-based interventions that have been studied and demonstrated to benefit cancer patients experiencing anxiety and or depression.

“Helping cancer patients improve the quality of their life in the moment and recognize their situation is key,” Parks said.

Once an oncologist makes the referral to Integrative Wellness, Parks begins her work with each patient with a conversation about their concerns and goals of care. Sometimes, providing treatment means referring the patient to a provider outside the practice. As an example, “with intractable nausea and vomiting not responsive to medication, we send patients for acupuncture,” which has proven effective in many cases. The team is working to add acupuncture to the services offered in the Integrative Wellness Center when they move into their new offices on the first level of the Sandra R. Berman Pavilion.  

Parks has spent hours with individual patients, helping them gradually adjust the dose of their pain medications as they develop additional strategies for managing their symptoms. With the appropriately tight restrictions on refilling pain medications, this care can entail multiple visits and phone calls with each patient.  

Providing this full array of services is what sets GBMC and the Berman Cancer Institute apart. Many of the treatments provided in the Integrative Wellness Center are not reimbursed by insurance companies. Community support, including grants from the Milton J. Dance, Jr. Endowment and contributions to Oncology Support Services, fund the program. If you ask patients, these contributions are an investment in their wellbeing, especially for patients who benefit from additional support during any part of their cancer journey, from diagnosis to survivorship.  

It is treatment that lives up to GBMC’s vision of providing every patient, every time with the care we would want for our own loved ones.  

Easing the pain and worries of patients can be stressful. Parks finds joy in playing music. Her husband, a former philosophy professor and lifelong musician, has turned his attention to teaching string players, composing, and performing. She occasionally joins him in professional performances – they once played Irish music and now focus on bluegrass and roots music – but she finds playing for an audience brings its own level of stress.

So, true relaxation comes when they play music together purely for fun. Parks finds music to be an ideal refuge.