I recently visited the Oncology and Radiotherapy wards in the Osborne Building at the Leicester Royal Infirmary to see the brilliant work Macmillan Cancer Support does to help patients with cancer and their families.

The NHS staff I met said the key to providing excellent quality care is having a multi-disciplinary team that works together around the individual patient’s needs. This involves not only the doctors, nurses and radiographers in the hospital, but GPs, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians and pharmacists in the community too. Anita Pabla, a Sarcoma Clinical Nurse Specialist who I spoke to, told me part of her role is to act as a ‘key worker’ – helping to improve collaboration between different parts of the NHS so patients get seamless, joined up care.
Allen Bhrydges, a former cancer patient I met who now volunteers through Macmillan, told me about another crucial element of good quality care: that patients and their families get the right information, at the right time and in the right way. He summed it up really well when he said: “there must be a culture of openness in the NHS”. Macmillan Cancer Support provides a fantastic information service in the Osborne building, and has plans to improve and expand this work by opening a new information centre next year.