Melissa Schink, a Senior Research Nurse for Developmental Therapies, joins The Lighthouse Podcast this week. Melissa is based out of Egleston at CHOA, and her campus is mostly focused on developmental therapies for solid tumors, as well as some leukemia and lymphoma patients. She shares her own personal journey to this role, which has her following patients from the very beginning of the clinical trial process, all the way through the study. She explains how her job is a combination of lots of research, measurements, and note-taking, but also patient care. She shares how important it is for her team to be clear with families about what phase 1 trials are and what they aren't, so that they know that saying 'no" to a clinical trial does not mean they're giving up, or saying no to a proven cure. She also explains how the research works on a trial—with shared databases all over the world, and different levels of oversight to track things such as the drug's effectiveness, any adverse effects, and risk vs benefit analysis. Melissa closes by sharing her heart for her patients, wanting to encourage any future patients that her team cares about the child in front of them the most, not the drug companies.
