Cancer nurses warmly welcome the creation of a new workforce of 40 dedicated cancer nurse co-coordinators to help cancer patients navigate the health system.
In a pre-Budget announcement this week, Health Minister Tony Ryall said funding for the new nursing role was included in an extra $33 million over the next four years to improve cancer services (see other story on prescription increases).
Wendy Thomas, chair of the Cancer Nurses Section of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, said the initiative was an “absolutely wonderful” opportunity to help patients with incredibly complex needs to navigate the health system.
She said a literature search of similar roles in Canada, USA, and Australia showed very good benefits for both patients and health services through the reduction in emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and a general reduction in the need for urgent intervention.
“So that’s a win-win for the hospitals, as well as the patients by reducing costs.”
The Minister’s office said the concept of the role was modelled on the work of lung cancer clinical nurse specialists like Catherine Smith at Canterbury District Health Board. The nurse co-coordinator would “case manage” the patient’s care from referral to discharge, including being first point of call for patients and providing information on their diagnosis, clinical management of common symptoms, and co-coordinating the patient’s care as they move through different services.
Thomas said she and Smith estimate there were about a handful of cancer nurses currently working in such roles in New Zealand.
She said the New South Wales co-ordination services set the role at the level of clinical nurse consultant, so nurses taking on the role would be very experienced and very familiar with how the many layers of the health system worked.
A spokesperson for the Minister said the Ministry of Health was still working on a range of options for developing the roles, including professional development for existing nurses. Details of how the funding was to be allocated was also to be finalised with the new role expected to be implemented within a year.
Thomas said she hoped the allocation of the roles would be coordinated and “hopefully well-balanced between rural and urban populations”.
She said the coordinator role would also provide opportunities for quality improvement and audits to see what difference it was making to patients.
Cancer nurses were also looking forward to the implementation of the national IT project for cancer services, which would also make a big difference to patient care through reducing duplication and allowing services to talk to each on a common platform.
