Cancer Nursing

The nature of cancer care is changing as new treatments improve survival rates. However, cancer remains a devastating disease and patients need both skilled clinical care and intensive support while receiving treatment, and increasingly, in managing the long-term effects of the disease after treatment.

Nurses are the linchpin of the cancer care team, managing complex new treatment regimens, coordinating care and ensuring patients receive timely diagnosis and treatment. They are also the professionals patients turn to for emotional and practical support, and need to be able to offer this in a compassionate manner and adapt it to individual patients’ needs.

This award is open to individual nurses or teams from the NHS or independent sector who have improved the quality of care patients with cancer receive during diagnosis, treatment and beyond.

Examples might include initiatives to:

• Streamline care pathways to reduce waiting times for diagnosis or treatment
• Extend the scope of nursing practice in order to improve care
• Address practical or emotional issues faced by patients receiving treatment or beyond

Each entry will be judged against the following criteria:

• Innovation: originality of the idea
• Value: impact of the initiative on patient care and/or service effectiveness
• Patient focus: evidence that patient/service user need was central to the work
• Collaboration: evidence of the involvement of other professionals, services and/or patients in the project
• Clinical effectiveness: data demonstrating how this initiative drives clinical enhancements
• Leadership: evidence of entrants championing their innovation in their organisation or more widely
• Adaptability: ideas that could be adapted for use elsewhere in entrants’ organisations or other organisations
• Sustainability: initiatives that can be embedded within organisations to operate without the input of the people who developed them

If you are shortlisted for this award, and with coronavirus conditions permitting, you will be invited to attend our Covid-19 secure offices to present to the judges on Monday 6 September 2021. The shortlist will be informed if there are any changes to the final judging process.

Take a look at what our 2019 winner had to say about winning this award: