A Dedicated Guide of Lung Cancer Care

Seeing a gap in adequate care for rural families, Loretta Ford helped start the country’s first nurse practitioner program, specializing in pediatrics, in the 1960s. She is considered the founder of the nurse practitioner movement. Nurse practitioners continually improve their expertise by sharing professional skills and searching for ways to improve and expand the profession, most especially for those patients with lung cancer. They go against the grain to navigate the medical system with prowess for individual, departmental and organizational success in helping patients who have received a new diagnosis or for those individuals receiving palliative radiation for a lung cancer diagnosis.

Beverly Smith, ANP-BC, NE-BC, is the Loretta Ford of NYU Langone Health. She has dedicated 40 years of her life to a wonderful nursing/nurse practitioner career here.

This journey has become like her family, one she has embraced, improved upon and expanded throughout her profession. She has held many positions at NYU, with her present role being a nurse practitioner caring for patients with lung cancer. She continually fights for our well-defined scope of care and greater professional and economic recognition in the care she provides. By teaming up with community partners and radiation and medical oncologists, Beverly has been able to help people and patients stay healthy and assist patients who already have chronic illnesses to maintain their health and prevent further disease and disability when possible. She goes at great lengths to do so. She provides palliative and comfort care and resources for patients and families to maintain the best quality of life, and she assists with terminal/hospice care for those at the end of life.

What sets Beverly apart from other health care providers is her unique emphasis on caring for, comforting and seeing the patient as a whole person. By focusing on health promotion, disease prevention, and health education and counseling, Beverly guides patients in making smarter health and lifestyle choices, which in turn can better their quality of life. Beverly demonstrates the reflective practitioner who can improve practice by dedicating time each day to thinking, reading and writing about what she has experienced. By sharing this experience, potential implementation for improvement can be generated via individual, departmental or organizational facilitation for success.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.