Thanks to funding from LNWH Charity, through the transformation innovation fund, staff treating patients at high risk of developing cancer can now support their psychological needs as well.

Laura Monje-Garcia, national lead nurse for Lynch syndrome said: “At St. Mark’s Centre for Familial Cancer, we assess and treat patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer and are under an intensive surveillance programme. Naturally, they are worried and anxious and need psychological support that needs to be tailored to their experience. This in turn has a huge emotional and psychological impact on them.

“I identified the need for healthcare professionals to be equipped with level 2 psychological skills training to improve the support that we provide and by doing so, improve the emotional well-being of our patients. We also worked on developing an assessment tool to identify and streamline patients who need extra support. This ensures they receive the help that they desperately need, which improves compliance with their treatment and surveillance plans.

“The transformation innovation funding enabled me to produce the tailor-made training programme for our group of patients with an external clinical psychologist. It was really successful, and staff said that they found it helpful and would recommend colleagues to do it if they had the opportunity. I am hoping to run additional training, but that’s still a work in progress.

“The great thing about the training is that it’s relevant to any staff who come into contact with patients with chronic conditions. This is particularly useful for nurses and administration staff.

“I am also looking into a set of virtual support sessions for our patients which would improve their ability to cope using psychological interventions such as mindfulness.”

If you think your team or department would benefit from similar training, and you have funding, Laura would be happy to talk to you about how to progress it, so please email her.