The Trust’s pioneering work setting up new care pathways for women recovering from breast cancer is set to go global.

The course (which the paper focusses on) has received rave reviews from our patients (read them at the bottom of this) with one saying it was so good "nothing could be done to improve it."

Consultant Jo Dent and Advanced Practitioner Veronica Allinson have co-written the paper which has been published in the prestigious  European Journal of Cancer Care’.  (Sept 2016)

Their article – written with colleagues in Australia and Quatar -  is entitled: "Open Access Follow-up Care for Early Breast Cancer: A Randomised Controlled Quality of Life Analysis". Read it here...

http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/collpubs.asp

The paper reveals the findings from our five-year pilot study offering cancer survivorship courses for women with low to medium risk of their breast cancer returning. The programme replaces the repeated hospital check-ups and is meant to be a reduced stress approach to follow-up care.

Around 110 women took part at venues such as Briar Court Hotel and fed back their view on the new approach and how that helped shape their recovery over a five year quality of life evaluation. The results show the outcomes are just as good as constant hospital appointments.

The courses includes providing women with the education to be aware of their conditions and, obviously, all the contacts should they wish to come back to hospital at any time. Women  get advice on a range of subjects to support their recovery. A course on reconstruction is new, recent addition.

Five years of data has been collated with colleagues at Huddersfield University and it is such a success other hospitals in Yorkshire are adopting  it.

Veronica said: “ It has taken a while but we got there and for it to be published in this journal is a real honour.”

Breast Cancer Care backed the pilot and is also backing its roll-out countrywide since their early, pilot work at CHFT.

Here's some of the feedback the Trust has received about the courses:

• valuable – very good speaker.
• enjoyable – listening to the ladies experiences.
• I have found it nice to be able to talk about what I’ve been through.
• Interesting – helping to move on
• valuable – excellent teacher.
• coming in! Nervous and a bit afraid of lecturer – entirely misplaced as whole talk was enlightening – no complaints at all.
• I am trying hard to move forward and be positive.
• Can’t think of anything to improve the sessions.