6 December 2024
The 2024 UKONS conference, on a theme of "Working towards positive change in cancer care", was held at the Manchester Conference Centre on November 14–15, 2024.
For the third successive year this proved to be the largest UKONS conference ever staged with 820 attendees, 626 of them being healthcare professionals. 147 posters were presented , with the standard higher than ever before. The conference therefore built on the success of UKONS 2023 and the event continues to grow and develop.
After a brief welcome from Dr Karen Campbell (UKONS President) and Mark Foulkes (Immediate Past President) Day 1 began with a keynote address in the main hall from Duncan Burton, the newly appointed Chief Nursing Officer of England. He thanked all Cancer Nurses for their continued hard work, and said that all 13 thousand cancer nurses have an important role to play. He particularly spoke of their contribution in delivering ACCEND, their work in genomics and in developing research and digitalisation. He also spoke highly of the work of Maggies Centres and the important issue of supporting women who had been ‘crashed’ into the menopause by cancer treatment. He also reflected on the need to deliver personalised care to all of our patients. He concluded with a call for nurses to ‘get involved’ in the NHS 10 year plan and to make nurses voices heard, especially with regard to safer staffing.This was then followed by our first industry session, sponsored by Roche, considering inequalities in care for older patients.
Following this the programme moved to a number of quick-fire presentations by professionals who has submitted their posters. This gave the opporunity for the presenters to summarise their work in the main room. This was part of a conscious effort to introduce a wider range of speakers and to involve UKONS membership in the conference. This also provided attendees with the opportunity to hear about work on a huge range of topics.
After lunch and a viewing of the conference exhibition the programme resumed with the parallel breakout sessions. Once again these were selected from the poster presentations and were divided into the poster themes. In the ‘Education and Training’ session Jane Mayes discussed the implementation of a skin tone assessment in pressure ulcer prevention , Millie Weston presented on cancer patients' experiences of precision medicine and genetic testing whilst Finn Tysoe spoke about an illuminative evaluation of a Post Graduate Certificate in cancer care. Naman Julka-Anderson discussed assessing, managing and teaching around Radiation Induced Skin Reactions. On the theme of ‘Innovation and Transformation’ Laura Collantes spoke about an evaluation of a senior adult oncology programme, Michelle Richardson presented on the early identification of patients with additional needs on cancer pathways, Bethany Maynard considered the impact of an Acute Oncology presence within acute admission units and Samantha Cowpe and Delme Parsons explored bridging the gap between primary and secondary care.
In the ‘Research’ breakout session Grigorios Kotronoulas considered the use of community-based talks to explore cancer knowledge and attitudes within the Chinese population in Galsgow. Zoe Clothier presented her qualitative study of what cancer patients and clinicians consider to be the main touchpoints in psychosocial cancer care, Ciara Nic Giolla Chomhall considered a qualitative evidence synthesis on fear of recurrence in women with ovarian cancer and finally Susy Pramod presented her work on surveying nurses with regard to their knowledge of managing fungating wounds.
There was then an opportunity for attendees to attend Members interest group meetings which were running in some of the rooms. Following this there was the second of the industry sponsored sessions supported by Novartis. This featured a nurse, a physiotherapist and a pharmacist highlighting the multi-professional nature of prehabilitation. In the following session Lisa Barrott and Dr Harshini Green spoke about how nurses can become more involved in research and how to take research opportunities that might be presented.
Dr Tootie Bueser, Director of Nursing & Midwifery, South East Genomic Medicine Service Alliance, then took to the podium to ‘demistify genomics’, she told us how genomics is benefiting patients and how nurses can begin to support this work via education on webinars, the Macmillan genomics toolkit and other resources.
Finally on day one, Professor Michael West presented our best evaluated talk of the entire weekend, presenting on compassionate leadership. This was both moving and inspiring and illustrated how truly compassionate leadership is not a soft or easy option needing to focus on honesty, listening skills, and empathy when interacting with others.
The scientific programme for the day then concluded and a typically raucous evening event allowed attendees to network and relax in a true party atmosphere. The bandeoke proved popular with many delegates (and indeed organisers) taking the opportunity to put in some memorable ‘performances’.
The second day programme commenced, perhaps a little early for some, with a welcome from Dr Mary Tanay (President Elect) who then introduced Dr Grigorios Kotronoulas speaking about the practical aspects of implementing patient reported outcome measures in cancer care. The session explored othe benefits of PROMs in symptom monitoring and personalised treatment planning, shared guidance on selecting appropriate tools tailored to cancer populations and outlined some of the challenges. Clinical teams are more likely to implement PROMs if they are not seen as a tick-box exercise, are easy to collect and use and clinically relevant and their use is normalised.
The next session was particularly well-evaluated and featured the President of UKONS, Dr Karen Campbell, discussing her UKONS-sponsored research into the perception of risk in nurses handling SACT. She found that there was lack of consistency in use of closed systems, there was an overall lack of clear guidance in how best to adhere to health and safety law across the UK. This resulted in in divided nursing community with somne SACT nurses believing there a no issues with SACT safety and others who believe UK practice is poor.
The first of the industry-sponsored sesions of the day then took place with Gilead supporting a session on the unmet need of sexual health and wellbeing in breast cancer.
Following this there were four very well-attended breakout sessions.
The first of these covered the haematological perspective on cancer care. Charlotte Bloodworth and Karen Stanley’s presentation covered emerging nursing roles in haemato-oncology, focussing on the growing complexity of cancer treatments and the need for advanced nursing competencies in managing hematologic malignancies. Presenters outlined key areas where nurses are making a significant impact and the presentation was engaging and encouraged audience participation. Matthew Fowler spoke about the role of the cancer workforce in creating more inclusive haemato-oncology services. He emphasized the importance of fostering a diverse and culturally competent healthcare team. The session also addressed leadership initiatives to create supportive environments that value inclusivity, promote equity, and provide mentorship opportunities. The third presentation in this breakout had Dr Barry Quinn discussing innovations in supporting people living with advanced disease and delved into innovations in supporting people living with advanced disease, emphasizing the critical role of palliative care and prioritizing the needs and preferences of patients. Throughout the presentations the speakers who belong to the UKONS haemato-oncology MIG (members interest group) presented a snapshot of the activities currently taking place within the group as well as highlighting some future actions for the year ahead.
Session two concentrated on innovative nursing roles, with Mark Foulkes talking about a practical application of the ACCEND framework in assisting developmental CNS post-holders develop into full practitioners. Julie Hoole described a wide-ranging and succesful project considering flexible roles to address non-surgical oncology workforce shortages. Nellie Kumaralingam then presented an introduction to the Macmillan Pan-London CDL pilot project which aims to provide new CNS post-holders across London with direct support in developing theoir roles and confidence. The third breakout session focussed on radiotherapy with Claire Duffy presenting a complex case study on a patient receiving head and neck radiotherapy, Amy Dodd talking about Proton Beam Therapy, Professor Ananya Choudhury addressing the role of the MR Linac in oncology treatment and Carly Ashley discussing the role and application of external beam radiotherapy. Session four gave attendees the opportunity to hear about the important role of the compassionate care domestic abuse toolkit with Sandi Dheensa and Katie Hemer talking about its application in practice and Marion Goodchild providing the vital voice of lived experience of domestic abuse.
The second day then continued with the giving of the prizes and awards which were presented by Dr Jo Bird and Constance Rowell. Poster prizes were presented to Zhuming Bao (Young and Early Career Cancer Nurse Award), Mary Edwards (Past President Award), Laura Charlesworth (3rd Prize) and Danielle Casey (2nd Prize). The best poster prize was won by Kirsty Macleod for her work on ‘Difficult Intravenous Access (DIVA) Prevalence in the Oncology Population’. The conference’s final industry-sponsored session had two specialist SACT nurses talking about how patients receiving Enhertu SACT on a long-term basis could be supported. The session was supported by Daiichi Sankyo/AstraZeneca.
The next session showcased the importance of co-production with service users, and those with lived experience, in developing health information in prostate cancer. Dr Sara Nelson engaged the audience despite having to present via a video-link and was suported by Susannah Ramsay. Dr Verna Lavender and Gina Madera then presented lon the conclusion of the CASCADE project with the launch of the Acute Oncology Competence Assessment Passports. The next step in this long-term project is to encourage all UKONS members to promote them and incorporate their use in a wide range of health-care professionals working with cancer patients.
The final presentation of UKONS 2024 was given by Dr Jo Bird who covered the important and developing issue of long term effects experienced by those who have received immunotherapy.
The conference was closed officially by Dr Karen Campbell, who also announced that UKONS 20 year anniversary conference would be held in Birmingham in 2025.
UKONS have received the audience feedback on the 2024 conference. In common with our recent events it was well-evaluated with more than 95% of attendees rating it ‘good’, very good or ‘excellent’ and 94% rating it highly in terms og how worthwhile their attendance was. The UKONS board will soon be meeting to go through the feedback in more detail and to continue to plan for our anniversary conference in 2025. We would like to thank all of pour members and partners for their continued support.