 |  |  | | | PRE-REGISTRATION NURSES – THE ROUTE TO BLOOD CANCER EDUCATION | | | | |
| |  | |  Candy Cooley
Release Date: 28 February 2005
Although survival of cancer has increased tremendously over the past 50 years, all cancers including haematological diseases urgently need better treatments and ultimately cures. Keeping nurses informed about the status of these diseases helps to ensure patients have the best recovery and management.
Information for nurses about haematological malignancies and related illnesses is an important activity of Leukaemia Research and Nursing Leukaemia is going some way to achieve this. A recent RCN conference in York in November 2004 warned that unless nurses are kept updated and informed about different cancers, UK cancer services will fail to match European survival rates.
Survival has been linked to changing attitudes for many solid tumour cancers - giving up smoking, awareness about health and well being, including obesity, and patient and carer involvement. Blood cancers have also come far in the survival stakes following scientific advances which continually lend to the understanding of these diseases.
There is still much work to be done while patients face aggressive forms of disease. With changes in nurse training, pre-registration nurses may find that they have very little experience of patients with leukaemia. Many pre-registration courses have minimal content about haematological malignancies in their course curriculum.
The NHS Cancer Plan has attempted to set out aims on streamlining services, bringing organisational demands to improve delivery, educational training and multidisciplinary teamwork. Candy Cooley, Palliative Care Development Manager and nurse educator at South Worcester PCT, presented at the RCN conference and told Nursing Leukaemia that a Cancer Act may well be the best proposal in influencing health professionals ability to manage cancers, as well as ultimately contributing to the increase of cancer survival rates.
She said: "I have been trying to raise the profile of cancer in pre-registration education for many years. At my last university we had a module on cancer in the third year. Comments on the evaluation sheets were things like 'finally a module relevant to practice' and 'why did we not have this sooner, so I would have known what to do and say?'"
Candy said that of the 700 students who undertook the module, most had cared for a cancer patient in the first two years of their training but had not been provided with education on the topic. She feels this is as much a reflection on how society sees cancer as educational institutions.
"Society's view of cancer is that it is a killer and often caused by a lifestyle habit," Candy said. "We need to change the knowledge about cancer of those entering nursing and medical training early on, to change attitudes to care. There is a belief that whilst society has such a negative attitude we will never improve early attendance when people find a lump or altered health as they think 'Oh, this may be cancer and they can do nothing'."
She feels that the profession wants nurses to act as role models, but we also need to get them to change their beliefs. "Nurses sometimes tell me how scared they are to say the wrong thing. Having sessions with clinically skilled health professionals who admit cancer is scary is important. Most relevant is for experienced professionals to be there for students," she said.
Candy feels there is a lot that can be done to increase the amount of cancer care input on courses. She feels that pre-registration students do have a shortfall of theory and practice in these areas, and said: "I think nurses tend to think of cancer as being one disease. Early training would help them understand how different treatments are chosen and why survival statistics are so different."
She is very keen for reference to be made to the NSF (National Service Framework, 2001, 2003) contained in the NHS Cancer Plan to address the needs of an older age group who may encounter cancers and haematological malignancies. "Cancer and haematology nurses should be utilising the NSF for the older person as their tool to raise the importance of care for the chronic myeloid leukaemia group and to ensure they have access to appropriate treatments," Candy said.
"I think that nurses can keep up the profile by making it their duty to attend conferences and meetings, attending hospital meetings, putting in for awards that raise the profile of their service. Being involved in public awareness meetings and lobbying their MP for support is just as important," she added.
Health professional, charitable organisations and carers work daily to meet the varying needs of patients. Education in this area will continue to be a priority with issues surrounding the older population who live with more chronic forms of haematological malignancies, including limited treatment options, entrance into clinical trials and longterm management.
Source: Livvy Fernandes, Nursing Leukaemia Co-ordinator, Leukaemia Research Fund
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