Cancer service named as runner up for national award for involving patients in shaping outstanding care
Nottinghamshire Healthcare's East Midlands Cancer Alliance Centre for Psychosocial Health (EMCA CPH) service was announced as the runner up in the Picker Experience Network Awards, in the Engaging and Championing the Public category. They were up for the award for their work to develop a Patient Involvement Collaboration (PIC).
The awards recognise best practice in patient experience across all facets of health and social care in the UK and beyond.
EMCA CPH strives to put patient experience at the centre of its decision-making processes. To facilitate this, it established the PIC, ensuring patients can be involved quickly in service planning and development decisions.
Becky Sutton, Chief Operating Officer at Nottinghamshire Healthcare said:
Huge congratulations to the team on being named as runners up in these national awards. We're really proud of their important work to involve patients with decisions around care, and it is fantastic to see that recognised nationally, well done.
The service provides high quality training to cancer care professionals, mental health support for those living with and beyond cancer, and leads on research and evaluation, to ensure patients continue to be provided with the best possible support.
Dr Adam Hill and Dr Felicity Gibbons, both Principal Clinical Psychologists in the service who co-lead the Patient Involvement Collaboration said:
We are honoured that the Patient Involvement Collaboration (PIC) was recognised as runner up in the Engaging and Championing the Public category. Since establishing the PIC, our central priority has been embedding patient voices into the fabric of the EMCA Centre for Psychosocial Health, shaping our clinical practice, training and research.
This award belongs just as much to the dedicated patient representatives who make up the PIC group. Their passion, commitment and insight are the driving force behind everything we do - and it was a real privilege to spend the day celebrating alongside one of them at the awards day.
We left the awards feeling inspired, proud, and motivated to continue ensuring patient perspectives are at the heart of psychosocial cancer care.
The PIC includes people who have experienced cancer, mental health issues and received treatment for those difficulties. As a result, PIC members can give a personally, experientially informed perspective on how such care could be improved.
Louise Beevers (PIC Group member) said:
As a founding member of this group, I cannot even begin to express how the work we have achieved so far has positively impacted my own life living with terminal cancer. The work we do goes a long way to future proofing services for generations to come too.
EMCA CPH is really dedicated to investing time, expertise and consideration into actually listening and actioning the patient voice. Not only this but the PIC group has also opened avenues for its members to become actively engaged in current, relevant and helpful research. The work that EMCA CPH and consequently, the PIC group do has personally given my life constructive purpose and I believe this to be a big contributing factor to my living longer, beyond my own expectations. The ability to contribute from our own lived experience can only improve, strengthen and solidify cancer care services.
PIC is not just a group, it is a lifeline. EMCA CPH initiating its existence, has made life for those of us living with cancer and beyond as that of a recognised and valued one and our unique input can only really positively influence care and services for those patients yet to come.
The group includes 14 cancer patients meeting regularly through the year. They can help to influence the way that NHS clinical services are delivered and developed over a large geographical area; informing the way research is designed and delivered to improve care, and contributing to commissioning discussions, so decision-making at the highest level is informed by the voices of patients' who have personal experience of receiving mental health support related to a cancer diagnosis.
One example of the PICs involvement is in the innovations developed by the service. It has a number of digitally supported innovations to improve outcomes for patients, including personalised self-help smart-messaging programmes for common difficulties associated with cancer, including anxiety, low mood, sleep problems, nausea, and pain. The PIC has been involved in the design of all innovations, providing valuable insight into how the patient experience can be improved.
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