Supportive Care Team

Social Workers

Social workers offer support for you, your significant other (partner, husband, wife), and/or your family for cancer related issues.

They can help with:

• Depression (feeling sad)
• Anxiety
• Stress management
• Loss or grief
• Concern about money
• Changes in relationships
• Sexual health
• Speaking with your parents or children about cancer

Registered Dietitians

Registered Dietitians can teach you about nutrition during every stage of your cancer process.

Speaking with a dietitian can help you:

• Keep up your energy during treatment
• Build strength before/during/after treatment or surgery
• Reach and stay at a healthy weight
• Manage side effects from your cancer or treatments

Spiritual Care Practitioners

Spiritual Care Practitioners support you during your experience of living with cancer.

Spiritual Care Practitioners can help you with:

• Supportive Listening
• Exploring hope
• Talking about what provides meaning and purpose in your life
• Connecting with your inner strength
• Connecting and re-connecting with communities that support your well-being
• Exploring feelings around your diagnosis, your treatment, and your experience with cancer
• Supporting you during your experience of living with cancer

For more detail, please visit our spiritual care page.

Music therapist

Music can provide care and comfort, improve feelings of well-being, and assist in processing the emotional impacts of cancer. The music therapist works with outpatients, inpatients and family members to support them through their cancer using instruments, singing, songwriting, music listening, and relaxation, either at bedside or in the outpatient clinic.

Let’s hear what you had to say! Patients and staff participated in an interactive and collaborative songwriting project that created three heartfelt songs. Listen to them now:

• The shadow
• What cancer cannot do
• Home away from home

Pain & Symptom Management Team

The Pain & Symptom Management Team can help you to manage pain or any number of different symptoms from your cancer. You can see them before starting, during or after treatment based on your health needs. This team offers care to outpatients who come to Grand River Regional Cancer Centre or any of our partner sites for cancer care.

Palliative Care Consultative Service

This is a service that you can access as an inpatient at Grand River Regional Cancer Centre. An inpatient is someone who is staying on the oncology (cancer) unit of the hospital (6th Floor of Grand River Hospital). This team offers the same services as the Pain & Symptom Management team but inside the hospital. They will visit you, or your lived one, while in the hospital.