Northampton hospital staff shortlisted for top national awards for cancer care

Two Northampton General Hospital (NGH) teams have been shortlisted for top national awards for the services and care they provide to cancer patients.

The Uro-Oncology Nurse Specialist team and Macmillan Social Care team have been named as finalists in the Macmillan Professionals Excellence Awards 2022.

The Uro-Oncology Nurse Specialist team has been shortlisted in the Innovation Excellence category, which recognises unsung people who have developed new approaches to supporting cancer patients.

The team has been working closely with the Macmillan Support Centre - and with men living with prostate cancer - to listen to and respond to their needs.

Northampton General Hospital’s director of nursing Debbie Shanahan said: “They have demonstrated a very strong commitment to engage with patients and adjust services to meet their needs - which is at the heart of what we do in healthcare.

“The approach they have adopted has made some demonstrable improvements in the care experience for men with prostate cancer and I wish them well in the awards on November 8.”

Patient express surveys demonstrated to nurses on the team that cancer patients - particularly prostate cancer patients - struggled to get the specialist information and support they needed.

In response, the team set up a dedicated phone triage line to direct patients to get the relevant support they needed with different options depending on their individual needs. Stickers are now also added to patient information packs to clearly identify who to contact depending on the nature of their query.

Webinars, information videos, and live online Q&A events have also been established to help patients better understand and manage their condition.

As a result of these changes, the number of calls answered directly by staff increased from 48 percent to 93 percent within three months.

The number of times patients accessed information videos and webinars increased from 29 at the start of the initiative in April 2020 to almost 2,500 hits in August 2022.

A patient experience survey in February 2021 showed that the percentage of patients who found it easy or quite easy to contact their clinical nurse specialist rose from 72 percent to 85 percent.

NGH’s Macmillan Cancer lead nurse Elizabeth Summers, who nominated the team for the award, said: “The key to the success of this work was working closely with men living with prostate cancer, listening to what was important to them, and then making changes to improve care.

“Listening to them was a very powerful experience and it enabled us to take some practical steps which have made a real difference to the way we provide care and the way that patients experience it.”

The Macmillan Social Care team have been shortlisted for the ‘Whatever it takes’ category, which aims to recognise people who have gone the extra mile and demonstrated compassion, kindness and teamwork.

The team was established in 2008 in response to a lack of professionals dedicated to identifying and addressing the social care needs of people living with cancer.

The team supports patients and their loved ones throughout all stages of their cancer journey and is composed of two Macmillan specialist social workers, Jan Bolton and Sonya Genus.

Jan said: “We created a service which is person-centred and works closely with our multidisciplinary cancer team and partners.

“Social care is an area of care for patients that often falls outside the remit of any one organisation but can have a dramatic effect on a patient and their family.”

Their work has led to improved patient and carer experience, reduced the number of inappropriate readmissions to hospital, reduced length of stays in hospital and has enabled patients to live and die in a place of their choice.

The team has also influenced national policy, working with government agencies to enable patients to choose to die in their home countries.

Both teams will make a presentation of their work to judges in September and find out if they have been successful at an awards ceremony on November 8, 2022 in London.