How does a Patient Navigator best provide advice by mediation between patient and doctor?

What I need to hear from a patient in order to give them their options is to know what their cancer diagnosis is and what their treatment is, and when the expected treatment is going to happen. It’s also really beneficial if I’m able to talk with that patient’s oncologist to find out what is the plan for this patient. Do we have permission to talk to this patient about doing emergency IVF which may take two to three weeks and may mean delay in treatment? Is that okay with this oncologist? Would this oncologist give us that time in order to do this for this patient?

If I don’t have that time, I don’t know that it’s beneficial for me to talk to that patient about it. Or maybe I would tailor that kind of conversation saying, “If we were able to have more time, this may have been one of your options. After talking with your oncologist, it doesn’t seem that this is going to be something we’re able to do so these are the other options that are available to you.” So, it’s really trying to get as much information from the patient, from the oncologist and helping the patient make that decision, kind of giving them what their options are and then kind of helping them make the decision to say, “These are the things that we can do. This is the timeframe that we can do it,” and then kind of spearheading them into that decision as quickly as we possibly can.