Dr. Wooten's grandfather was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer the summer before she began her medical education at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Her family's experience during that time has shaped the way she cares for her own patients at Roswell Park.
In 12-hour shifts, every day of the week, the Respiratory Therapy team works to help everyone at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center breathe a little easier.
Our Public Safety team is always present on campus to keep us safe while sharing a smile, a friendly hello and some needed assistance. They are our protectors and often go above and beyond the call of duty.
Like other hospitals and medical offices, when COVID-19 hit Western New York, Roswell Park set up central points of entry and introduced a wellness screening system for all those who enter our walls.
To ensure the highest care for our patients, Rutherford believes that first, we must care for ourselves. She feels strength in her spiritual journey, and takes time each day to reflect on what’s happened through her shift.
The nurses on 6 West, like other floors, are used to working long hours. They are, after all, an inpatient unit that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to care for patients who have lymphoma and solid tumors. For them, the past several months have mostly been business as usual, except for one aspect: no visitors were allowed on inpatient floors for the first two months. This absence of family members was very difficult on patients and nurses alike.
From the moment the hospital began enacting extra safety procedures to protect patients from COVID-19 exposure, the 143-person Diagnostic Radiology team worked together quickly to adopt additional tasks to keep the department clean and safe.
In 2019, Pamela Hershberger, PhD, came upon a stunningly significant finding in her research lab. Dr. Hershberger, Associate Professor of Oncology in Roswell Park’s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, says she and her team had been “studying patients with a particular type of lung cancer — EGFR mutant lung cancer — and their response to a specific class of drugs called EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.