Nurses have a key role to play in supporting people to be healthy and through their experiences of illness. Our research explores those experiences and the ways in which people can best be supported to maximise their health and cope with the consequences of illness and its treatment.
A multicentre trial of a breast care nurse delivered cognitive behavioural therapy intervention to reduce the impact of hot flushes and night sweats in women with breast cancer.
7 out of 10 women who have had treatment for breast cancer have hot flushes and night sweats. And these can have a negative impact on daily life and ability to sleep. There are drug treatments that can help but these can have unpleasant side effects.
A number of research studies have shown that a talking therapy called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help reduce the impact of hot flushes and night sweats. It also improved people’s mood and quality of life. In the research, the therapy was done by clinical psychologists with groups of women. Only some of the women had breast cancer.
In this trial, breast care nurses are trained in CBT. The researchers want to find out if the nurses can deliver a similar reduction in the impact of hot flushes and night sweats for women who have had treatment for breast cancer.
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A Pilot Trial of the Mini-AFTERc intervention to manage Fears of Cancer Recurrence in patients with breast cancer
Funded by Chief Scientist Office
People with breast cancer report high levels of fears of cancer recurrence and show increased health service use, over-frequent self-examination, depression and reduced quality of life. This research will assist people with cancer to manage their fear of cancer recurrence following their initial treatment.
A psychological intervention, AFTER, has been shown to be effective in reducing severe levels of FCR and we have preliminary tested a shortened version (Mini-AFTERc), for delivery by breast cancer nurses via telephone to people with moderate FCR.
We will run a pilot trial of the Mini-AFTERc in four cancer centres with the aim to test: recruitment, retention, training and supervision of model delivery, intervention uptake, centre randomisation, evaluation system and then decision to go to a full clustered randomised trial.
The impact of the lung cancer nurse specialist in facilitating a rapid access lung cancer clinic with remote access to the specialist clinician.
Funded by the National Lung Cancer Forum for Nurses
This study will evaluate the impact of the lung cancer nurse specialist facilitating a rapid access lung cancer clinic (RALC) with remote access to the specialist clinician. The RALC clinic will be based in a District General Hospital in rural West Wales and will accept urgent suspected lung cancer patient referrals from the local general practitioners.
Prior to this clinic people with suspected lung cancer had to travel over two hours to be seen at the RALC in the neighbouring county, so new ways of working were needed. The distance, poor road infrastructure and patient preference for services closer to home lead to the development of a new specialist clinic design.
The new clinic design is for the lung cancer specialist nurse to provide all the initial assessment and preparation for diagnosis and then to link remotely with the specialist lung consultant.
The study will assess patient satisfaction with the quality of communication in the new clinic, analyse the impact of the new clinic on the timeline of the diagnostic pathways and determine the overall patient experience of their lung cancer journey. The project aims to find out if using a specialist nurse in this way to run a clinic meets the needs of the patients from a quality and safety point of view, and assess if the patient experience is improved.
