The development of an innovative Nurse Led Ovarian Cancer Survivorship Clinic

In April 2011, Velindre funded two Gynae-Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialists, prior to this there had been no Specialist Nurse cover for twenty months. Due to the increase of cancer incidence and patients living longer, a clinic Audit was conducted in 2011 which formed the basis for the need for change. This audit looked at Gynaecological Oncology follow up service delivered by Velindre.

This identified alternative ways to deliver efficient, effective care to patients addressing waste, harm and variation. Velindre were unable to maintain the level of follow up appointments as there were too many patients to be seen by the number of consultants available. Patients often had to wait up to four hours to be seen and a travelled long distance for what was quite often a routine appointment with no clinical problems identified. Over running clinics was a regular occurrence as well as patient dissatisfaction.