One of the best roles a nurse navigator can incorporate into her daily routine when seeing a newly diagnosed patient is to begin educating the patient about clinical trials. All too often, patients associate the phrase “clinical trials” with “experimentation,” and, of course, this is not the case. As a result, patients can miss opportunities to participate that, in fact, may be of specific benefit to them. Clinical trials are also not limited to chemotherapy; this too is a myth.
