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NURSING PEOPLE WITH CANCER IN SCOTLAND
A FRAMEWORK
FOREWORD
BY THE CHIEF NURSING OFFICER
The hard statistics on cancer, which show that up to 26,000 people in Scotland will receive a diagnosis of cancer each year, and that more than 150,000 have lost their lives to the disease over the last 10 years, make painful reading. But the statistics do not tell the whole story. For each one of these numbers represents a person - a person with a family, friends and colleagues, a person beset by the myriad physical, emotional, social and economic pressures that cancer brings in its wake.
It is to the needs of these individual people that nursing addresses itself.
At its most effective, nursing focuses on the whole spectrum of issues people with cancer and their carers face. It starts with the drive to do everything possible to prevent cancer occurring, with nurses in all areas of the health services offering vital education on measures people can take to reduce risks. Nurses are with patients from the time cancer is first suspected, through the diagnostic process, into treatment and on to cure or, for some, through recurrence of disease, palliation, and end of life. They work in partnership with patients, helping them identify needs, offering support and advice, and delivering some of the interventions that will help them to find relief, remission or cure.
It is the importance of nurses to reducing the incidence of cancer, to improving outcomes of cancer treatments, and to making the experience of cancer a more positive one for patients and their carers, that makes this Framework such a significant document.
It sets out the strategic vision that will shape nursing services for people with cancer across NHSScotland, in all care settings and in all geographic areas. The overall aim is to ensure that nurses, working as part of multi-disciplinary teams and in partnership with patients and carers, can plan, deliver and evaluate individualised care focused on facilitating health, enhancing well-being and meeting patients' healthcare needs.
The Framework builds on key cancer care policy in Scotland, notably our Cancer Plan,
Cancer in Scotland: Action for Change; indeed, the inspiration for the development of the Framework came from the Scottish Cancer Group, who were responsible for producing the Plan. It reflects the general drivers of healthcare policy in Scotland, with the need to increase the involvement of patients and the public in their own services, the need to ensure equity of access and consistency of quality of services throughout Scotland, and the need to ensure that the nursing workforce is appropriately educated and supported to fulfil its role, all featuring prominently throughout the document.
The Framework also recognises that while nurses working in specialist cancer settings provide vital services to patients and their carers at key junctures in their cancer experience, patients' greatest contact will be with those nurses who work in non cancer-specific services, for example in primary care, in general or non-cancer specialist departments in hospitals, in nursing homes, and in specialist services for children and people with mental health problems or learning disabilities. The impact of such nurses on people with cancer is enormous, and it is right that measures to support and develop their services are central to the Framework.
There are therefore exciting opportunities within the Framework for all nurses in Scotland to develop, improve and lead services for people living with cancer. More important, the Framework sets out through its recommended actions how better focused and co-ordinated nursing services, delivered within the existing structure of cancer services in Scotland, will result in better care for patients. The Scottish Executive is committed to taking the recommended actions forward, and will monitor how they are being implemented in practice through NHSScotland reporting mechanisms.
I am grateful to the many people - nurses, fellow healthcare professionals, stakeholder organisations and individual patients and carers - who have contributed to the development of this Framework. I am confident that their efforts will ensure continuous improvements in the nursing services delivered to the people behind the statistics.
MISS ANNE JARVIE, CBE, RGN, RM, BA
Chief Nursing Officer
Scottish Executive Health Department
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