SLCH News: New Office Suite Consolidates Services for Neuro-Oncology Program
The Neuro-Oncology Program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH) and Washington University School of Medicine is the region’s largest and only program with a dedicated multidisciplinary team working directly with families and referring physicians to optimize treatment plans. Now the program has further enhanced this coordinated approach with a new office suite located near the neurosurgery clinic on the hospital’s fourth floor.
“Hearing that your child has a tumor of the central nervous system is difficult in itself. Our goal is to not add to that difficulty by requiring parents to deal with a complicated approach to seeing the subspecialists these children need,” says Jeffrey Leonard, MD, SLCH pediatric neurosurgeon. “Our new office suite expands on that idea by bringing together in one space our neuro-oncology team. This facilitates our discussions about patients and their treatment plans as well as helps us closely coordinate our various research efforts.”
An important feature of the new suite is space for consultations with families. “Clinics are busy places, and at the same time one family may be getting difficult news about their child’s diagnosis, another may be rejoicing with good news,” says Joshua Rubin, MD, PhD, SLCH pediatric hematologist/oncologist. “We now have the capability of giving families the privacy they deserve to hear about their child’s diagnosis.”
He adds, “We also have teleconferencing capabilities that allow us to much more effectively review diagnostic scans and discuss patient care issues with other institutions.”
In addition to neurosurgery and hematology/oncology, SLCH’s neuro-oncology team includes subspecialists in pediatric bone marrow transplantation, radiation oncology, neuropathology, endocrinology and neuropsychology, as well as pediatric nurse practitioners, child life specialists and social workers.
“This is truly a patient-directed, patient-focused area of clinical care that allows us to apply whatever resources patients need to help them through their treatment,” says Dr. Leonard.
To learn more about the Neuro-Oncology Program or to make a referral, call Children’s Direct at 800.678.4357.
