Treatment and supportive care – Clinical Service Excellence Programme

The following are areas where we have noted excellent and innovative practice at CSEP accredited hospitals

Embedding frailty assessment into newly diagnosed patient clinics
Developing supportive self-care pathways and multidisciplinary clinics, giving patients more autonomy and building resilience
Providing access to specialists such as myeloma/haemato-oncology specific physiotherapist, occupational therapist and social worker
Requesting specialist input from care of the elderly team and/or geriatrician
Enabling patients to receive systemic anti-cancer therapy at home
Allowing patients sufficient time to complete holistic needs assessment forms, either online at home or dedicated clinic time with CNS and/or support worker
Physiotherapy and occupational therapy teams assisting the community rehabilitation team with home visits for patients who struggle to attend the hospital. This service is vital for those a rural, elderly patient cohort
Offering nurse-led holistic needs clinic
Grouping together myeloma patients who were diagnosed at similar times for their outpatient appointments and treatments
Working closely with rheumatology colleagues

Below are links to articles healthcare professionals have shared with us about their service. If you want to find out more, or are interested in developing one of these areas at your hospital, please contact the CSEP team at csep@myeloma.org.uk

The Lilac Centre haematology and oncology day unit

Nicola Goffinet, Haematology Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) at St Helens Hospital, explains the value of the services available for myeloma patients at The Lilac Centre haematology and oncology day unit, which include chemotherapy, supportive care and complementary therapy. Could you explain how the service started and what prompted it? The Lilac Centre opened 20 years…

Non-medical prescribing: A nurse-led treatment clinic for myeloma and AL amyloidosis patients

Jackie Quinn, Myeloma Clinical Nurse Specialist at Belfast City Hospital, reflects on setting up the first nurse-led systemic anti-cancer therapy clinic in Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, and how the clinic has developed since. Jackie completed a non-medical prescribing course in 2009 and started the clinic in 2010. Why was the clinic started? The…

Ambulatory care for autologous stem cell transplants

Katie McDougall, Senior Sister for Ambulatory Chemotherapy at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, explains the ambulatory care service for autologous stem cell transplants (ASCTs). Offering the ASCT process in ambulatory care means patients can stay in their own home and familiar surroundings - with the reassurance of close monitoring through the aftercare available on…

The role of a myeloma physiotherapist

Physiotherapists are key healthcare professionals involved in the care of myeloma patients. They may be able to show patients different ways of sitting, sleeping, or moving to help them manage pain. They can also advise on safe ways to increase their activity or mobility. Here, Emily Mean, Clinical Specialist Myeloma Physiotherapist from Hampshire Hospitals NHS…

Frailty assessment of newly-diagnosed myeloma patients at Leicester Royal Infirmary

Frailty is a hot topic in myeloma, with a subsequent push to implement tools and strategies which ensure that patients defined as frail receive appropriate treatment for their age and physiological condition. In response to this, the team at Leicester hospital, headed up by Dr Mamta Garg, have introduced a frailty assessment for all their…

How best to assess patient frailty in a myeloma clinic

The concept of frailty is not new, and it has been gaining focus across various medical specialities in recent times. It is particularly important within the cohort of myeloma patients, due to the increased prevalence of frailty with older age and the globally ageing population. Frailty is a predictor of poor outcomes in myeloma, which…

Introducing home treatment with bortezomib (Velcade®)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges to the delivery of care for haematology patients on an unprecedented level. Teams faced an urgent need to restructure ‘routine’ services to allow myeloma treatments to carry on as much as possible, while also reducing the risk to this particularly vulnerable group of patients.

How mobile cancer services improve the quality of life of myeloma patients

The management of myeloma has changed significantly in recent years as more drugs for myeloma and its symptoms have become available through the NHS. These recent advances mean more patients receiving a wide variety of treatment from chemotherapy and immunotherapy to bisphosphonates. Furthermore, many of these treatments are given continuously further increasing the number of…