Macmillan Cancer Support have announced that Dr Claire Taylor will join the organisation in June as its new Chief Nursing Officer (CNO). In this role, Claire will jointly lead Macmillan’s Centre of Clinical Expertise alongside Macmillan’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Rosie Loftus.
The 2022 UK Oncology Forum meeting is fully supported with no registration fee for UK HCPS only, ensuring that NHS cancer HCPS from across the UK can attend this highly educational, CME accredited, multi-disciplinary meeting (post ASCO). Refreshments, lunches, and conference dinner will be free of charge at the ICC only.
The PRosPer programme provides e-learning on supporting people with cancer in personalised care and support planning, prehabilitation and rehabilitation. It also covers managing the consequences of cancer and its treatment, workforce development and service redesign. The guide defines and explains the importance of prehabilitation and rehabilitation in the personalised care of patients with cancer and showcases examples of projects running across the cancer pathway, before, during, and after treatment.
The SPPC Annual Conference has been rescheduled for Monday 30th May 2022. A lot can happen before then, but for now we are looking forward to welcoming you back in person to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
Supporting primary care teams to talk and be with people who are bereaved or experiencing living grief
The prospectus is interactive making it easy to navigate the new learning offer and the designed programme of eLearning modules, webinars, virtual classrooms and blended learning opportunities will help nursing teams develop skills and expand knowledge, so you can continue to provide the best support and care to people affected by cancer.
SAVE THE DATE!
After an enforced 2-year gap UKONS will be particularly pleased to welcome our members, presenters, guests and sponsors to our first face to face conference since 2019. Of course, our two ‘virtual’ conferences have been successful and well-evaluated but there is no substitute for truly reconnecting with each other after the most challenging of times for cancer nursing.
Macmillan Cancer Support and Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse are working in collaboration to understand the needs and experiences of people affected by cancer and the cancer workforce when it comes to domestic abuse.
We want to improve the services offered to those affected by cancer and abuse, but we can’t do this alone. It is vital that any improvements are led by and grounded in the experiences of people on the frontline.
The growth of the cancer workforce is not keeping pace with the increasing demand for cancer services. The National Cancer Workforce Plan (2017) and NHS England’s People Plan (2020) both pledge to increase and transform the cancer workforce to support the delivery of 21st century care. Over the last few years Macmillan Cancer Support have consistently flagged the concern that around 30% of the specialist cancer nursing workforce will retire in the next 10 years whilst also highlighting that CNS numbers will have to double by 2030 in order to meet the needs of an aging population; many of whom will be living with the effects of cancer or cancer treatment. Running alongside this real threat to CNS numbers, is the fact that the CNS workforce delivers real quality to patients. The presence and accessibility of a CNS is consistently flagged as the major factor in improving the experience of patients with a cancer diagnosis.
Cancer in people with learning disabilities is on the rise. This is thought to be due to the increase in life expectancy, as a cancer diagnosis increases with age. This means that there will be more people with learning disabilities living with and beyond cancer who need emotional, financial and practical support.
Pre-orders are open for Enhanced Palliative Care, a new textbook in line with Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines and the NES Framework for Palliative and End of Life Care. The textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the principal areas encountered whilst working with adult palliative and end-of-life patients, and their families.
Trekstock is a cancer charity that was set up in order to provide tailored support for younger people with a cancer diagnosis, focusing on the age range of 20 to 40 years old. It was founded in 2009 by Sophie Epstone after she became aware of a huge gap in tailored support for those diagnosed with cancer in their 20s or 30s.
COVID has had an enormous impact across the world. In the UK, it has cost premature deaths and left a devastating impact on many people’s lives. The pandemic has also had a huge impact on healthcare delivery. As a consequence, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Respiratory Health (APPG) decided to look at the impact of COVID on respiratory health services in the UK and on the NHS ambitions for lung cancer care and outcomes. They decided to concentrate the inquiry on the post-COVID recovery and chose to investigate lung cancer in particular as even short delays to referrals or treatment can have a large impact on patients.
In the summer of 2021 UKONS announced a research grant of up to £50,000 to support a preliminary research study to explore the perception of nurses about potential occupational exposure to cytotoxic drugs. This follows on from the UKONS-funded Cochrane Review published in 2018 looking at that use of closed system transfer devices in addition to safe handling.
Rad Chat is the new cancer specific podcast, designed for cancer patients, healthcare professionals and educationalists.
Hosted by Jo McNamara and Naman Julka-Anderson, both therapeutic radiographers who have unique backgrounds, bringing specialist knowledge and skills to the conversation. They have already had some truly amazing guests including Rachael Moses, Charlotte Beardmore, Janice St John Mathews and Will Kinnard to name but a few, with more high-profile guests lined up until March next year. Their guests include cancer patients, healthcare professionals, researchers, and leaders within healthcare and oncology.
The UKAOS is a new multidisciplinary group of health professionals committed to the development and delivery of Acute Oncology services across the UK and for it to become the UK voice of Acute Oncology supporting the development of education and research.
A piece of work has been published in The BMJ which looks at the evidence for the effective use of video consultation and also gives some evidence-based advice on how to carry these out safely and effectively. The article offers a pragmatic approach, based on the best available evidence and the opinion of the authors, on using video consultations and concludes that patients and doctors should carefully consider the appropriateness and safety of video consultation, and have a low threshold for changing the mode of consultation, should the need arise.
Clinical research is vital in enhancing patient care and developing new treatments and is also crucial for identifying, treating, inhibiting and curing diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of clinical research in terms of discovering new treatments. While nurses have always been involved in clinical research, but research nursing was only established as a standalone speciality in 2006.
The UKONS Board are delighted to invite UKONS members working in haemato-oncology or lung cancer to apply for a place on the Takeda Oncology HCP professional development programme. There are fifteen places available on this innovative non-promotional, educational programme that aims to support haemato-oncology and lung cancer HCPs in enhancing their contribution to patient care and the healthcare system. The programme runs over a year. It includes completion of seven soft skills e-learning modules, attendance at two workshops (currently offered via online meetings), use of a 360o appraisal tool and an opportunity to receive individual coaching support.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is a registered charity and a progressive think tank. It has now published ‘Building back cancer services in England’ a report which examines the condition of cancer services in England following the coronavirus pandemic and how services might best recover.
From the 11th to 13th November 2021 UKONS hosted our second virtual annual conference on the theme of ‘Caring Connections’. We felt that his theme reflected the struggles, challenges, and indeed successes, of nurses continuing to support patients and our colleagues into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macmillan and Guy’s Cancer Academy have launched a new online learning resource designed to build on the Macmillan Cancer Support programme ‘What Matters to Me?’ and to support staff who are involved in conducting consultations with patients, following their holistic needs assessment, to agree their plan of care. This learning package was co-designed and developed with the Innovative co-Design and Evaluation of care Plan Training and education for Holistic needs (‘InDEPTH’) Advisory Group and workshop participants, led by UKONS president and Head of Guy’s Cancer Academy Dr Verna Lavender. It was funded by Macmillan Cancer Support.
