Cancer Reform Strategy - NHS Cancer Screening Programmes

72 CANCER REFORM STRATEGYBox 26: Our vision for informing, engaging and empowering patients●●●●●Face-to-face communication with healthcare professionals should enable those affected bycancer to gain a clear understanding of their condition, have their concerns and preferenceselicited and become engaged in decisions about their care;People affected by cancer should be offered high quality information at key points in theircancer journey, tailored to their individual needs. Some patients will need additional supportto understand and act upon the information they are given;Information delivery should be an integral part of each step in the care pathway. It shouldreinforce face-to-face communication with a health professional. It should be available inprimary and secondary care and from other outlets including dedicated information andsupport centres and libraries;Information needs to be evidence based, balanced, regularly updated and composed in plainlanguage. It needs to be culturally sensitive and available in a variety of formats. It shouldinclude personalised details, be locally customised and be available with a focus suitable tothe patient’s needs at a given point in time; andThe purpose of communication and information is to inform and empower patients so thatthey can play an active role in decisions about their care and treatment if they so wish.health professionals. 1,300 health professionalshave participated in these courses.5.12 The current three variants of thecourse for advanced care professionals arebeing merged into a single course tofacilitate national rollout. The course nowneeds to become standard local practice.The expectation is that over time all seniorhealthcare professionals will be able todemonstrate that they have the level ofcompetencies to communicate complexinformation, involve patients in clinicaldecisions and offer choice, as part of theirprofessional development and basiccompetence. Primary Care Trusts (PCTs)should ensure that they commissionservices from healthcare professionals whohave received training and can demonstratethis through, for example, peer review.5.13 Furthermore, in addition to trainingsenior healthcare professionals, we need toensure general and community basedclinicians and other healthcare staff whotreat and support cancer patients have hadaccess to good communication skillstraining at a range of levels. ContinuingProfessional Development needs to be inplace for this.5.14 Specific communication skills are neededfor effective face-to-face communication withchildren and young people. A number ofsuccessful pilots have been run withhealthcare professionals working in thisarea and a course, based on the nationalmodel, will be developed.Information products, pathways andprescriptions5.15 There are a number of high qualityinformation products for cancer patients,frequently produced by cancer charities.These cover a wide range of topic areas, suchas cancer and its treatment, local services,returning to work and financial benefits and areavailable in different formats (electronic, printed,audio, video etc.).5.16 Cancer networks have been working withthe Cancer Services Collaborative ImprovementPartnership to develop standardised informationpathways, establishing the different types ofinformation product that patients with specificcancers may wish to access at different keypoints in the care pathway. Over 160 pathwayshave been mapped and twenty one cancernetworks have at least two tumour specificpatient pathways agreed. Work to collate theselocally produced patient information pathways