About this role
Key Responsibilities
The Care Navigator will help the client and family:
- Navigate the cancer-care journey, including diagnostic testing, specialist consultations, treatment planning, surgery, systemic therapies, radiation, recovery, follow-up, and survivorship as applicable.
- Prepare for medical appointments by organizing relevant information and developing concise, prioritized questions for oncologists, surgeons, cardiologists, and other specialists.
- Follow up after appointments by organizing physician recommendations, identifying unresolved questions, and translating agreed-upon plans into clear next steps.
- Coordinate information across providers, including oncology, breast surgery, cardiology/cardio-oncology, primary care, nutrition, and other specialists, with appropriate client authorization.
- Maintain an organized care plan tracking appointments, testing, physician recommendations, medications, pending decisions, questions, and follow-up actions.
- Support informed decision-making by helping the client understand general medical terminology and treatment pathways and identify questions that should be addressed by the appropriate physician.
- Facilitate second opinions and additional specialist consultations when requested, including helping organize the records and questions needed for those consultations.
- Provide patient advocacy, helping ensure that the client’s priorities, concerns, and questions are effectively communicated to the healthcare team.
- Support execution and accountability around physician-approved priorities involving nutrition, hydration, medication adherence, sleep, appropriate movement, recovery, stress management, and other health behaviors.
- Provide calm, compassionate support throughout the care journey while recognizing when medical, nutritional, or psychological issues should be referred to the appropriate licensed professional.
Preferred Oncology Experience
Strong preference will be given to candidates with substantial direct experience supporting individuals with breast cancer.
Candidates should be familiar with breast-cancer care and terminology, including:
- Pathology, tumor grade, and staging
ER, PR, and HER2 status
- Breast imaging and lymph-node evaluation
- Lumpectomy, mastectomy, and sentinel lymph-node procedures
- Radiation therapy
- Chemotherapy and other systemic therapies
- Endocrine therapy
- Treatment sequencing
- Second opinions and multidisciplinary cancer care
- Recovery, surveillance, and survivorship
Experience with invasive lobular carcinoma is a plus.
The successful candidate should be capable of explaining general concepts in understandable language while appropriately referring individualized interpretation, prognosis, and treatment decisions to the client’s physicians.
Complex Care, Nutrition & Overall Health
Experience supporting medically complex oncology patients is strongly preferred. Familiarity with cardio-oncology and coordinating cancer care with cardiologists and other specialists would be particularly valuable.
The Care Navigator should also understand the importance of maintaining adequate nutrition, healthy weight, physical strength, and muscle mass during cancer treatment.
The role may include helping the client implement recommendations established by physicians and/or a registered dietitian related to:
- Adequate calories and protein
- Healthy weight maintenance or weight restoration
- Muscle preservation
- Hydration
- Managing barriers to eating
- Appropriate physical activity
- Sleep, recovery, and stress management
Individualized medical nutrition therapy should remain under the direction of the appropriate licensed healthcare professionals.
Qualifications & Ideal Background
We are particularly interested in candidates with backgrounds such as:
- Oncology Registered Nurse (RN)
- Oncology Nurse Navigator
- Breast Cancer Nurse Navigator
- Oncology Nurse Practitioner
- Certified oncology nurse
- Oncology Patient/Care Navigator
- Oncology Social Worker with substantial care-navigation experience
- Other licensed or credentialed healthcare professionals with significant oncology experience
Additional preference will be given to candidates with:
- Several years of direct oncology experience
- Significant breast-cancer experience
- Experience navigating multidisciplinary cancer care
- Experience with medically complex patients
- Familiarity with cardio-oncology
- Patient-advocacy experience
- Health-coaching or behavior-change training
- Cancer-nutrition knowledge
Core Competencies
The strongest candidate will combine:
Oncology expertise + breast-cancer experience + care navigation + patient advocacy + exceptional organization + accountability + excellent communication + emotional intelligence + sound judgment.
The individual should be proactive, compassionate, highly organized, discreet, trustworthy, and comfortable working collaboratively with the client’s physicians and family.
Most importantly, the Care Navigator should know when to help, when to ask questions, and when an issue needs to be referred back to a physician or other licensed healthcare professional.
Scope of Practice
This role is intended to complement—not replace—licensed medical care.
The Care Navigator will not independently diagnose medical conditions, determine prognosis, prescribe treatment, select cancer therapies, recommend starting or stopping prescribed medications, override physician recommendations, or provide individualized interpretations of pathology, imaging, laboratory results, or other diagnostic findings outside the scope of their professional license.
The Care Navigator will not recommend unproven therapies as substitutes for evidence-based cancer treatment or advise the client to delay or discontinue conventional medical care.
When medical judgment is required, the Care Navigator should help identify the issue, formulate the appropriate questions, and obtain guidance from the relevant licensed healthcare provider.
Availability, Confidentiality & Working Relationship
This is intended to be a high-touch, part-time engagement rather than a traditional fixed-hour administrative position.
The engagement may include regular scheduled sessions, preparation before important medical appointments, follow-up after specialist consultations, care-plan organization, tracking outstanding actions and decisions, and reasonable communication between sessions when significant care-navigation needs arise.
Occasional participation in or support surrounding important medical appointments may also be appropriate when requested and authorized.
Because the role may involve access to sensitive personal and medical information, the Care Navigator must demonstrate exceptional discretion and maintain confidentiality in accordance with applicable professional, legal, and contractual obligations.
Specific scheduling, availability, communication expectations, compensation, and scope of engagement will be discussed during the interview process.
This is a part-time, independent contractor engagement. Compensation is expected to range from $125–$175 per hour, depending on the candidate’s oncology experience, credentials, breast-cancer navigation background, and overall fit for the scope of the engagement.
Compensation for approved in-person appointment support, travel time, transportation, and other reasonable engagement-related expenses may be addressed separately.
Final compensation, schedule, expected availability, and scope of services will be discussed during the interview process.