“No wonder doctors feel like hamsters running on an exercise wheel to nowhere. And this sense of futility is driving burnout. How much patient care will you get out of docs who have moved on to nonclinical jobs, retired early, or committed suicide due to burnout? The time for rumination and hand-wringing is over! It is time for medical organizations to cooperate, take prompt action, and avert a health care crisis by protecting one of their most precious health care resources.”

Banu Symington, MD, Hematologist and Oncologist, Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, and WSOS Member-at-Large, shares her story in this podcast. 

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade has complicated cancer care for pregnant patients. Numerous states across the country are moving to severely restrict or remove access to abortion, a medical procedure often needed before cancer treatment can begin.

“That sacred relationship between the patient and the physician is being violated by these antiabortion laws,” Banu Symington, MD, Hematologist and Oncologist, Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, and WSOS Member-at-Large, said in an interview with JAMA.

Financial toxicity is a growing threat to the security and well-being of all patients, especially those who are receiving costly therapies. In this letter to the editor, Member-at-Large of the Wyoming State Oncology Society, Banu Symington, MD, MACP, Oncologist; Medical Director, Sweetwater Regional Cancer Center proposes solutions to this overarching problem.

When her mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, Dr. Symington reflected on the importance of making sure patients have a sense of closure, acceptance, peace, and dignity at the end of their lives.

"An ill-prepared death can be a death accompanied by uncontrolled cancer-related symptoms without hospice, death shortly after enrollment in hospice, or death in the hospital due to complications of treatment. All of these outcomes are undesirable for patients and perpetuate fear." 

May 17, 2021

President of the Wyoming State Oncology Society and Member on the Board of Trustees for the Association of Community Cancer Centers, Dr. Ajayi shares why telehealth services need to be extended beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure everyone has access to quality cancer care.  

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April 30, 2021

We are very familiar with unintended consequences in the world of medicine. Whether they be the note bloat that occurred when the electronic medical record was rolled out, the increase in mortality for certain diagnoses when shorter length of stays were mandated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or when attempts to reduce the cost of oncolytics changed cancer practice models and increased costs. Published in The American Journal of Medicine, WSOS Member-at-Large Banu Symington, MD, MACP, Sweetwater Regional Cancer Center, shares a story about an unintended consequence, as a wake-up call to urge regulators and physicians alike to remember to be mindful of the potential repercussions of new standards after they are put in place.