Building a Multidisciplinary Care Team for Sickle Cell Disease Patients

Announcer:
You’re listening to Project Oncology on ReachMD. On this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Nidhi Bhatt, who works in the Department of Hematology at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She’ll be discussing the role of multidisciplinary care teams in sickle cell disease management.

Dr. Bhatt:
Sickle cell disease is a multi-organ disease, and I think that one of the biggest things that we need to advocate for our patients is that it is not only a hematologic disorder. Our patients can have stroke, so they need a good neurologist. The patients can have pulmonary issues, so they need, a lung specialist. They need heart specialists and kidney specialists. They can even have endocrine issues, nutrition. But beyond all the medical specialties, I think our patients also need really good psychosocial support, so having neuro-psych testing available for our patients so we can understand our patient population better, having social work, making sure that patients have access and resources to take care of their disease and their health.

I work at a large academic institution, and we also have incorporated school coordinators, and this is so important because they make sure that patients have 504 plans, they have IEP plans, and the schools are actually following those 504 and IEP plans. And then also the school understands, what does it mean to have a patient with sickle cell disease go to their school? What accommodations are they going to have to make? They should have nurses, advanced practice providers, and physical therapists—because many of our patients have a vascular necrosis, which is a bone issue—so we want to make sure that the physical therapists are also involved in their care. So for me, ideally, I think of course having some of this medical expertise is very important, but I think we also need to have this surrounding support with a psychologist, social worker, school coordinator—somebody who can also help them transition, so a nurse care coordinator or a transition coordinator that can help them guide through a lot of these transition issues that they have to deal with and the education that we have to provide. I think that is what I see as an ideal vision for a multidisciplinary team or a multidisciplinary clinic for our sickle cell disease patients.

As a pediatric hematologist, I think having great collaboration with adult hematologists and having a good communication—a longitudinal communication—is also very important, and I think that provides a very good model of a good transition program is when the adult care providers are integrated with the pediatric care providers, and the pediatric care providers are somewhat also integrated in the adult care providers, which creates this very cohesive, transition plan for our patients. 

Announcer:
That was Dr. Nidhi Bhatt talking about multidisciplinary care for patients withsickle cell disease. To access this and other episodes in our series, visitProject Oncology on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of theKnowledge. Thanks for listening!