Travel time! Part one UK visits

After what felt like a very long time travel restrictions started to lift and life started to return to some sense of normality. I was now able to start making some firm plans and arranging my travel plans. My pre-covid plans were to go to Chicago only. However, as I had an extra 12 months to reflect on my travel plans and network virtually I made some changes to my plans and added a few more places on my list to go and visit. This was largely due to the people I had been able to meet virtually during lockdown.

Bath late effects cancer pain service

At the time I started making my travel plans there was still some travel restrictions to the USA and so I wanted to spend some time visiting local services here in the UK. The first stop on my list was the cancer pain late effects service in Bath.

I was able to connect with the team in Bath at a recent virtual conference that I had presented some work exploring the inclusion of cancer pain education in national nursing frameworks. I was overjoyed that I was able to arrange a visit to their service.

During the work I had done previously the thing that I noticed most was the lack of support for those impacted by cancer pain, especially those with chronic pain as a result of cancer and its treatment. When I heard about the service at Bath I was really keen to learn about their model and the services they offered. They are the only national service that is dedicated to late effects of cancer-related pain and offer a multi-professional approach.

I was blown away with the service they had to offer and their facilities. it was a fantastic opportunity to network with other professionals who shared the same passion for ensuring access to quality pain management. Again this confirmed my initial concerns regarding access to specialist support for those living with cancer-related pain. While the service at Bath is the exemplar and the do accept referrals from across the UK, there is a real need for more of these services around the UK to ensure that everyone who needs support can access it.

While It was unlikely that we could replicate this service across the UK there was a really need to rise awareness of the impact of late effects cancer pain and ensure that healthcare professionals have the knowledge, skills and confidence to be able to support those impacted by cancer-related pain.

One of the main outputs from this visit was that I was able to team up with those running the service in Bath and host a virtual study day aimed at healthcare professionals working in primary care. The main aim of this half day study day was to rise awareness of cancer-related pain and give them some guidance in the assessment and management of this. I was pleased to say that we run the day with 50 professionals from across the UK working in primary care setting. There was lots of great engagement on the day and I hope that we have been able to improve their knowledge, skills and confidence when supporting those impacted by cancer-related pain.

Edinburgh Cancer Centre

Next on my list was a trip to the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Now I must admit I am slightly bias when it comes to this one, as Edinburgh is my home. However, it's also home to the Edinburgh cancer centre which covers the east of Scotland. it is also home to Professor Fallon who is a world leading expert in cancer-related pain. I was incredibly lucky to be able to spend the day observing in her late effects cancer pain clinic.

This was such a humbling experience for me as I had read a lot of Professor Fallons work and cited it even more, especially her work in developing the European cancer pain management guidelines. It was such an honour to see her at work and learn from her how she manages those living with the impact of cancer-related pain.

My main take home message from this visit was again around accessing specialist support. Similar to the team at Bath this was a pocket of excellent practice in supporting those with late effects cancer pain, and while this is was excellent it noticed similar issues in the disparity in the care patients receive when they are not under the care of these specialist services. it seems like a lot of the time they are lost trying to navigate various services until they can find their way into one of these highly specialist cancer pain services.

At the same time I was doing this travel scholarship I was also preparing my application for a PhD and all this learning was helping me to shape a project that would equip healthcare professionals with the knowledge, skills and confidence to support those impacted with cancer-related pain. My goal would be to try and prevent those people feeling lost when navigating services, so that they could access support from any healthcare professionals and they can then navigate them to the specialist services.