Dominican physician focuses on easing the trauma of serious illness

Andrea Jno Charles and Lauren Shaiova, M.D. (center), at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City, with Uchenna Ozuah.

Her fellowship is one of the first such training programs at a public hospital in the U.S. and is focused on equipping doctors to better deliver on the quality care that is required for those suffering from chronic illnesses.

As she prepared to undertake the training program, Dr. Jno Charles told Jen Uscher of the Chironian-the New York Medical College newsletter that she decided to pursue this course of training because when her loved ones were in the hospital suffering from cancer, they weren’t even offered the option of hospice care. “I wish someone had mentioned it to us,” she was quoted as saying.

“There was so much information we weren’t given, and it was such a stressor on my family.” The young doctor settled on this area of specialty because she thought it offered her an opportunity to help patients with chronic or life-threatening diseases and give them more choices about their treatment and end-of-life care. “When you’re providing palliative care, you give as much attention to the family as you do to the patient, and it gives me joy to see how much stress we can alleviate for them.”

Dr. Jno Charles’ training is sponsored by the College’s Graduate Medical Education program, and she joins another intern Uchenna Ozuah, M.D.under the supervision of Dr. Lauren Shaiova, Head of the Department of palliative care of the hospital.

The goal of palliative care is to maintain the quality of life even when the patient cannot be saved. For the next few months, Dr Jno Charles and her fellow intern under the supervision of Dr. Shaiova and other attending physicians, will provide consultations for hospitalized patients on end-of-life issues such as when to consider forgoing invasive treatments and focus instead on easing symptoms. They also see patients with chronic diseases like multiple sclerosis in an outpatient clinic, do a rotation at a local hospice center, and attend journal club meetings.

Dr Jno Charles did her initial studies at Ross University in her home country of Dominica.