Who is Jill Trainer?

I’m Jill Trainer, I’m a licensed clinical social worker, I work at the Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern University. Patient Navigation for Fertility Preservation is a large part of the Oncofertility Consortium.

As a Patient Navigator, I work primarily with cancer patients who are newly diagnosed with some type of cancer, men and women. And, I generally only work with adults in this population right now. We are branching out to work with children and I have worked with some teenage girls and some teenage boys but primarily it’s working with adults.

As a Patient Navigator, I try not only to work with the patient, but also their oncologist, and family members, and any reproductive endocrinologist that we can to try to preserve their fertility prior to cancer treatment, which is a big hurdle, and usually a very short time frame. The patients are generally going through a very horrific time. It’s usually very chaotic, they’re in shock, they have a new diagnosis which is life threatening and then at the same time we’re talking to them about the possibility of losing their fertility because of these treatments they’re going to have for their cancer. During the course of a few short days possibly, we try to see if any possibility of preserving their fertility is there, we try to let them know what their options are, let them meet with the experts…an endocrinologist in reproduction or a urologist and try to let them know what their options are and include their oncologist in this conversations, so their oncologist is on board and gives their stamp of approval so that we can do these treatments and help them make that decision and make this happen…really rapidly.

Generally speaking, and this position is new, I’ve only been in this position about 14 months now, and as far as I can tell, it is the only one that is available in the country to patients anywhere. Not that they don’t have fertility preservation available to them but that there is a specific Patient Navigator for fertility preservation. As far as I know I am the only one out there.