Susanna L. Mitchell, CTR, serves as the Quality Control & Mentoring Director for the Oncology Services Division of Registry Partners Incorporated. Susanna oversees and directs the quality control & mentoring operations for all cancer registry projects, including Commission on Cancer accredited cancer programs as well as state incidence reporting and state central registry based projects. She serves as a mentor and resource for quality control managers and specialists. She presently resides in Callaway, Virginia with her husband Glen and daughter Hannah (15).
Mitchell began working for Registry Partners in 2011, as a project Certified Tumor Registrar where she has worked on both accredited and non-accredited hospital based projects. She was later promoted to Quality Control Specialist in May of 2011 and to Quality Control Manager in January 2013 where she has since contributed to corporate-wide quality control & mentoring efforts.
Prior to joining Registry Partners, Inc., Mitchell received her Bachelors of Science Degree at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA in 1995 with a major in biology and minor in chemistry. Later in 2007 she achieved her Certified Tumor Registrar (CTR) certification.
She began her career in the Oncology field in 2005 where she served as the cancer registrar for Maine General Medical Center in Waterville, Maine. In 2008 she accepted a cancer registrar position for Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia where she also served as the Quality Coordinator for the Oncology Committee. In addition, Mitchell has experience in Health Information Management where she has held positions as Correspondence Coordinator and Team Leader.
Mitchell is a member of the National Cancer Registrars Association (NCRA) where she presently serves on the Education Committee as well as the Virginia Cancer Registrars Association (VCRA) where she serves as Vice President.
Q&A with Susanna:
What are some of the tasks you perform that you like the most?
I enjoy mentoring a new CTR the most. Being able to share the passion for the job and see someone grow and progress in a career is extremely rewarding.
I love developing new tools for everyday use such as tips for efficient abstracting or quick reference guides.
DO you have any suggestions for new CTRs?
- Don’t get discouraged by the overwhelming amount of information. See the big picture of what a CTR does, but take small pieces of the job and put it together slowly. It will fall into place, but it’s impossible to learn everything at once.
- Find someone to mentor you who loves to teach. It will not only provide a person from which to learn, but a contact in the registry field and a friend for life.
Tell me a little about your experience on the NCRA Education committee
Helping to educate CTRs across the nation is incredibly rewarding. We develop the webinar topics and find presenters for these. We develop quick reference tools such as the grade flowchart. We provide podcasts for education on various topics such as texting. We also develop the JRM quiz for the NCRA publication. It’s rewarding to develop training for upcoming changes, challenging to anticipate the needs of all CTRs, and wonderful to interact with stellar CTRs on the committee.