Dr. Janice Nazareno

I’ll never forget caring for a young woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer just a week before her wedding.

Instead of figuring out table settings and planning her honeymoon, she was being overwhelmed by chemotherapy and fertility preservation.

Stories like her stay with me. As a mother of three daughters, seeing breast cancer affect younger women hits close to home. These are young mothers, young women building their careers and just starting to plan their futures. A diagnosis at this stage of life can bring so much more uncertainty with it, including work, family, fertility and what comes next.

I started working as a radiologist at Scarborough General in 2009, and 17 years later, I’m still here. My husband, who is also a doctor at SHN, grew up in Scarborough, and we’ve built our careers and raised our family here

My husband and I are both first-generation immigrants, so I have experienced personally some of the challenges and struggles that many of our patients face. I've worked at several hospitals across the GTA, but there's something special about working in Scarborough. Our patients come from so many different backgrounds and are incredibly grateful, hard-working, and appreciative of the care we provide.  

Over the years, breast imaging has become a bigger part of my radiology practice. When I first started at Scarborough General, there were only nine radiologists, and radiology was still largely male-dominated. I became more involved in breast imaging because I saw that women, particularly those with cultural considerations, often feel more comfortable with female physicians.

Today, we have a much larger group of female radiologists, which means we're better able to accommodate our patients' needs.