cancer
can a nurse tell you that you could have cancerous cell after an abnormal pap test?
Hi and thank you for the question.
This seems like a very simple question, but like most medical/nursing things, it really isn’t. Typically cancerous cells are identified by a pathology lab. Your sample is sent off, read by the lab, the lab writes a report and sends it back to the physician who sent it in, and the physician “interprets” it. This often means the doc just reads the report and goes with it, but not always.
A nurse can tell you that you have cancer or may have cancer, but typically does not diagnose it. So in an office with physicians and nurses, it is dependent on policy. The doc may get the reports, read them, sign off on them meaning to show they’ve been seen by him or her, and then hand them to the nurse to call or talk to patients. Or the policy may be that only the doc informs patients of this sort of thing. It totally depends on the clinic, the staff, and the policy.
In one line, the answer to your question is yes, but it depends. I hope that helps.
