Award for life-saving cancer screening team

A team who have invited more than 30,000 people for life-saving cancer checks have won an award for their work.

The lung cancer screening team, based at Buckland Hospital in Dover, won the Partnership Working award at the East Kent Hospitals Celebration Awards.

The team work closely with the Kent and Medway Cancer Alliance, GPs, and NHS Kent and Medway to identify people at risk of developing lung cancer. The screening is aimed at people aged 55-74 who are smokers or ex-smokers. They are invited for a telephone risk assessment and those classed as high risk will be offered a low-dose CT scan currently at Buckland Hospital.

So far more than 70 people have been diagnosed with lung cancer, despite having shown no symptoms

The award was presented by the Trust’s chief strategy and partnerships officer Ben Stevens at a ceremony in Whitstable, who said it highlighted teamwork and working in partnership to tackle challenges and improve patient outcomes.

The team were nominated by a colleague, who praised the working relationships they had built with smoking cessation advisors which has led to one of the highest uptake rates in the country.

They also hold outreach sessions, including in shopping centres and at the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury, to promote the programme and encourage people to take part. They also visited the Folkestone Nepalese Community Centre, Dover Outreach Centre and Dungeness Power Station.

Their nominator said: “The vast majority of lung cancers identified have been at stage 1 or 2. Typically, lung cancer patients present with later stages of disease, stage 3-4; for these patients, curative treatment is not usually an option.

“The programme has also diagnosed a number of other cancers, as well as non-cancer lung and cardiac conditions that picked up early can have an improved outcome for those patients.   

“The team are always available to chat to patients that are nervous or anxious and will take them to the CT department to show them the CT scanner and how it works so that they are not as frightened.”

Highly commended awards were also presented to colleagues Danielle Mackenzie, Hayley Lingham, and the Trust’s interventional radiology consultants.

Danielle is a Macmillan personalised care lead who works with partners to better understand the support available to people affected by cancer. She has developed education sessions for staff using patients’ stories, and is arranging walk-and-talk sessions to make services more accessible.

Hayley is the Trust’s head of emergency planning and works closely with partners including the police, fire service, ambulance service and the coastguard. She and her team have also built close relationships with event organisers and is co-chair of the Local Resilience Forum’s training and exercising group.

The interventional radiologists were nominated for their work in partnership with primary care and community colleagues to support patients with feeding tubes. They work with specialist teams and families to co-ordinate timely tube replacements and avoid unnecessary emergency visits or admissions.

The awards were funded by East Kent Hospitals Charity.