Rod L. Flynn, MD, discusses his role with Sentara, his area of expertise, and how he’s going to use his leadership role at Sentara to build a cancer program to serve the needs of the patients in the community.
Hi, my name is Rod Flynn and I'm a surgical oncologist working for this entire Ehealth network. I'll be taking care of patients with cancer on the peninsula and beyond. I've been in practice for approximately 18 years. I primarily take care of patients with cancers of many areas to include the abdomen and gastrointestinal tract as well as the skin, breast cancers and also rarer tumours such as sarcoma. As I also take care of patients with very advanced cancers that have spread within the abdominal cavity And two other specific organs. I have a clinical practice in which I take care of patients with multiple cancers but I also have a leadership role in helping to design the vision for taking care of patients within the Greater Peninsula region. I'll be uh the medical director of the peninsula oncology program here and my goal will really be too take care of all of the patients needs and to enhance it patient experience of all patients with cancer that we treat. I come from a family of a few doctors. My father is a retired radiologist. I also have an uncle in the Washington D. C. area who's a cardiologist. And so my father comes from Jamaica and he was one of 11 Children and his path to this country was rough and difficult one. But the perseverance and the hard work that he put forth to get him here was inspiring to me in terms of my career path. He never pushed me to specifically to going into medicine but I'd go to work with him and I just saw how he interacted with patients and his bedside manner and the way he engaged the staff as well made everybody laugh and smile. And so we have similar personalities. And so when I would go to work with him sometimes I would just look at him and say, huh? I could see myself doing something like that as well. So he was a big role model and getting me to think about going into the medical field without specifically pushing me in that direction. My approach to patient care is, it's pretty simple. Um, I listen to the patient's, I give them a voice, their empowered in uh their treatment plan. And the only way to be empowered is first you have to know and have insight into your disease process. So I think one of the things that I really focus on is making sure that the patient understands all the components of his or her cancer or disease process. And I think knowledge is power. I'm all about taking care of patients right there in the community and some terror is a great health system and they are focused on taking care of patients in the community. So these patients don't want to have to travel other places to get their treatment. And so my goal is to really roll up my sleeves and even in my leadership role to make sure that we can give patients the best care that they can possibly get here at home, where they could be among their loved ones is their enduring the treatment.
