It defies logic and commonsense that a Breast Cancer-specific non-profit, founded by Lyn Swinburne 20+ years ago to provide support to the people directly affected by breast cancer, cut specialty cancer nurses from its Helpline/Member Support Services (or whatever corporate double-speak has been coined for the new 'unit').
I fear that the Helpline staff who went over and above their Position Descriptions - strictly Breast Cancer - may have inadvertently contributed to the cut in services. Giovanna is acknowledged across the BCNA community as a woman possessed of profound compassion and empathy. She supported and counselled people diagnosed with breast cancer and also volunteered her research skills and compassion to those whose loved ones may have been struck by a related health issue. And here's where the metrics enter, once again - duration of phone calls, numbers of phone calls, subject matter of phone calls, time spent on research, X, Y, & Z...
BCNA's Pink Lady logo and website is hopelessly outdated, the barrier-free publicly available information hasn't been updated in a long time, but be sure BCNA's sophisticated telephone and Online Network tracking systems are collecting and analysing data at a granular level.
God forbid any BCNA supports are offloaded to McGrath. The McGrath nurse knew nothing about me when she phoned me prior to surgery (she was noticeably absent from pre-surgery appts w/surgeon). She engaged in guessing when I asked her specific questions about lymphoscintigraphy (her guesses contradicted the surgeon's information sheet) so I dismissed her. I had no need for her and I mandated that my file was closed to her. Someone on these boards has mentioned the lack of initiative by McGrath nurses and guessed that nurses become a McGrath nurse for the 'prestige'. My sense of their motivation to become a McGrath nurse is more selfishly-driven - they are tired of life on the wards so they seek a desk job with regular hours where they can paste on their 'empathy face' and rub a few arms and shoulders...supposedly this is 'support'.
@June1952 I'm following your advice and directing this to @Kirsten_BCNA
