Martha’s Vineyard Hospital celebrates cancer center’s 10th anniversary

Healthcare providers and patients were in a gregarious mood last week while celebrating the 10th anniversary of the MGH Cancer Center at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. 

The hospital held a reception on Thursday, June 22, with hors d’oeuvres and displays showing the impacts the center and staff have had during the decade-long journey — starting when it was only open twice a week, in 2013, to now providing care for most types of cancers. 

“It’s so hard to believe it’s been 10 years,” Martha’s Vineyard Hospital senior director of development Kim O’Loughlin said, welcoming the guests and acknowledging the patients and families who entrusted themselves to the care of the center’s staff. Martha’s Vineyard Hospital chief nurse Claire Seguin said her brother is a cancer survivor, which was a part of what pushed her to enter into the medical field.

The center began as a small clinic, and expanded its services over time until most types of cancer care that were done in Boston are now accessible on the Island. 

Jeffrey Barnes, medical director of the cancer center, elaborated on the Vineyard’s journey to acquiring a facility to care for cancer patients. 

Barnes has worked in other hospital systems, but he said Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was “more excellent than it deserves to be for the size” of the program. “A lot of that is because of the people in this room,” he said, referring to the staff.

The increased services over the decade also meant fewer people had to travel to Boston for cancer care, according to Barnes. “There were many initial visits where patients were getting maybe not the most up-to-date therapy, and therapy that required frequent visits where they were having to travel off-Island for various injections and so forth,” he said.

Additionally, while some care does require a trip to Boston, like a bone marrow transplant, Barnes emphasized care like the pre-therapy and follow-up care for the transplant was available on-Island. “That’s very unique for a small program like us,” he said. 

Barnes also said oncology was changing “under our feet,” and the type of care has changed, citing some patients receiving immunotherapy, which helps the immune system fight cancer, over chemotherapy. Another change Barnes mentioned was the rise in virtual care in the midst of the COVID pandemic, which allowed for more care accessibility for patients on Martha’s Vineyard, and collaboration with Boston-based doctors to find the right type of care for a patient. 

However, an important factor of the Island’s cancer center was community. Both Barnes and Sharon Spinney, a registered nurse at the cancer center, emphasized the importance of community. 

Barnes said the reason he kept coming back for 10 years was his fellow staff members and the more individualized attention that is given to patients, compared with Boston. “It’s just really a wonderful, tight-knit community of both patients and staff,” he said.

Barnes shared an example from a couple of weeks ago, when a patient missed an infusion appointment. Knowing this patient was not someone to miss an appointment, a first responder was asked to perform an area check. It turned out the patient was having a medical emergency and couldn’t reach the phone. The patient was transported to the hospital, and was later flown to Boston for care. 

Sharon Spinney, a registered nurse at the cancer center, said many in the cancer support group helped in donating the first two infusion chairs to the hospital. 

“No one in this clinic fights alone,” Spinney said. “And our team is always ready to help.”

Spinney, sharing sentiments from fellow nurses, said that the team tries to get to know the patients and their families to be able to provide better care for the patient. Sometimes the nurses have to play multiple roles to support patients, such as being a “detective” to figure out what is ailing a patient, or being a “beautician” to find the right wig to help a patient feel better. 

“The goal of what we do is to provide quality, compassionate care to all our patients here on Martha’s Vineyard,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing we’re proud of.”

On a personal note, Spinney said one of the best things for her is seeing a former patient “looking fabulous” and smiling outside the hospital. “When I see you upright and smiling and enjoying life, that makes me proud of what we do at our clinic,” she said. 

The community aspect was an important part of the care at the Island hospital, according to Sibel Suman, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017 after a visit to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital emergency department. Suman said it felt like “walking through a fog” during the week after she received the news. But Suman said the staff at the cancer center made it better over the years. Even though she “was dreading” the difficulties associated with her ongoing cancer treatment, the thought of catching up with the nurses made the hospital trips something to look forward to. 

“As a patient, I felt incredibly lucky to be here, to get services here at the cancer center,” she said, adding she is not sure what her life would have been like if she had been forced to move herself to an off-Island clinic.