Early Colorectal Cancer Nurse Specialist - Macmillan

Job overview

Kings is an established Tertiary Referral Centre for Early colorectal cancers receiving referrals from London and the Kent and Medway cancer networks. The Post Holder will act as the Keyworker and case manage all patients who have been referred with a diagnosis of early stage colorectal cancer and those with benign polyps suitable for an endoscopic resection approach, (TEMS,EMR and ESD). Working as a core member of the early colorectal cancer team they will provide a specialist nursing service with a focus on developing nurse led services to advance and manage evidence based pathways through from referral, diagnosis and onward follow up.

Main duties of the job

• To deliver and promote high quality evidence based care to early colorectal cancer patients, within the outpatient, and in patient setting.
• To act as the patient’s advocate through effective support and information, enabling them to make informed choices and decisions concerning treatment and care.
• To be an autonomous practitioner and manage, organise and evaluate own workload and clinics.
• To provide expert advice and education to clinical colleagues within the organisation and community settings.
• To work with the specialist consultants and multi-disciplinary team to develop and implement nurse led services to assess, plan and co-ordinate treatment and follow up pathways. The service will contribute to better outcomes and ensure that it develops according to the needs of patients.
• To participate in and influence policy and service development to ensure that services are based on high quality evidence.
• To collect, collate and communicate clinical data to enable audit, service evaluation and clinical research.
• Working with the TAC nurse led triage service for suspected colorectal cancer referrals to allow development of the nurse’s role.
• To support other colorectal nurse services i.e. ERAS

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide counselling, verbal and written information in accordance with Trust guidelines, for patients and their carers who are undergoing assessment and treatment for early colorectal cancer. Communicate complex information in a sensitive way that can be easily understood by the patient and their family/carers.
• To carry out HNA at diagnosis, end of treatment and other appropriate times in the pathway.
• To be responsible for ensuring patients are followed up in accordance with multidisciplinary agreed surveillance pathways.
• Autonomously refer patients to the MDT and other healthcare professionals where appropriate in a timely fashion.
• Develop and implement a nurse led telephone follow up clinic to assess patient’s clinical needs following the procedure and to inform them of their results and onward management.
• Provide an end of treatment summary for all patients.
• Provide advice to help patients make healthy lifestyle choices and be aware of the symptoms of bowel cancer
• To develop communication pathways to ensure referring teams and GPs are kept informed of patients’ progress and MDM outcomes/ recommended management plans.
• To work autonomously to organise own workload ensuring regular assessment of patient care and management; ensuring pathways are adhered to, and heath records maintained.
• Promote and develop a high quality profile for all service users and commissioners through professional and clinical leadership of the Kings early colorectal cancer service.
• To be prepared to under-go training to carry out diagnostic sigmoidoscopies on suspected early cancer patients should resources permit.