An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the Health Advisory Service at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust as a Cancer Care Coordinator. This rewarding role will support the delivery of personalised cancer care and health improvement interventions for people affected by cancer, with a particular focus on promoting healthier lifestyles and supporting smoking cessation.
Working closely with Health Advisors and the wider multidisciplinary team, you will play an important role in supporting patients throughout their cancer pathway, helping individuals access timely advice, personalised support and onward referrals to services that can improve recovery, wellbeing and long-term outcomes.
The successful candidate will support patients to make positive lifestyle changes, including smoking cessation, physical wellbeing and self-management, recognising the important role health improvement plays in cancer treatment, recovery and survivorship. You will communicate sensitively with patients, carers and professionals across a range of settings, often supporting individuals with complex physical, emotional and social needs.
This role would suit an organised, compassionate and motivated individual with excellent communication skills and a passion for improving patient experience, reducing health inequalities and supporting people affected by cancer to achieve better health outcomes.
The Cancer Care Coordinator will support delivery of personalised cancer care interventions, care planning and health and wellbeing support.
You will work closely with Health Advisors to support patients throughout their cancer journey, coordinating care, arranging onward referrals and providing practical and emotional support. A key aspect of the role will involve promoting healthy lifestyle choices and supporting patients to access smoking cessation and wider health improvement services to improve treatment outcomes, recovery and overall wellbeing.
The post holder will manage telephone and email enquiries, undertake follow-up contact with patients, support delivery of health and wellbeing initiatives and help patients navigate services across hospital, community and primary care settings. You will provide compassionate support to individuals with complex and sensitive needs, escalating concerns appropriately where required.
The role also includes maintaining accurate records, supporting audit and service development activity, and contributing to continuous improvement within the Health Advisory Service.
The Christie is one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, looking after more than 64,000 patients a year. We are based in Manchester and serve a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 25% patients are referred to us from other parts of the country.
We are the largest radiotherapy provider in the NHS with one in 20 treatments delivered at The Christie. We have up to 15 linear accelerators operating across our network of sites. We operate the largest chemotherapy unit in the UK on our main site and treatments are also provided at 13 other networked sites, and in patients homes. And as a specialist tertiary surgical centre, we focus on rare cancers, complex procedures, and multidisciplinary approaches to cancer surgery, specialising in colorectal, peritoneal, gynaecological, urological and plastic surgery.
We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years. We have been named by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), as one of the best hospitals providing opportunities for patients to participate in clinical research studies, with more than 800 studies open at any time, caring for over 3,000 patients.
Communication
- Communicate the benefits of quitting smoking non-judgmentally and effectively and give support to those wanting to quit.
- Ability to communicate with a diverse range of people in a compassionate and personalised way, including the ability to build rapport with patients..
- Communicate effectively with a range of staff across disciplines, grades, and organisations.
- Communicate updates to the Health Improvement Manager and wider clinic team to help with patient flow and access
- Ability to overcome barriers to understanding, e.g. patient has physical impairment, mental health condition or learning disabilities.
- Utilise communication skills to foster good working relationships with tobacco dependency service team and staff within other teams and partner agencies to strengthen service delivery.
- Communicate potentially sensitive information to service users and other health professionals
- Communication with health professionals in other agencies, locally and nationally regarding service provision and potential patient referral.
- To attend a range of internal and external meetings as required
- Promote smoke free homes and support and advise patients about the risks of second-hand smoke to others in their home.
- Ability to utilise reflective listening and persuasive skills, along with a positive attitude towards change to maintains relationships with difficult or reluctant to engage patients.
- Deliver factual clinical information with patients using reassurance, tact, empathy.
- Communicate effectively with patients including by telephone, including agreement of most appropriate tobacco dependency support programme to meet their requirements.
Service Delivery and Improvement
- Regularly meet with the Health Improvement Manager to assess and direct progress and to discuss opportunities for service improvement including more effective use of resources and an improved service for patients where identified
- Respond to referrals within agreed timescales. Book own appointments and manage own caseload, ensuring that all patient referrals and follow ups have been appropriately actioned.
- Provide in-depth, tobacco dependency consultations, including:
1. Assessment of nicotine dependency
2. Offer or review of nicotine replacement therapy products and vapes
3. Information about what support is available to support a quit
4. Assess the patient's readiness and ability to quit
5. Prompt commitment from the patient
6. Discussion of behavioural strategies
7. Agree tobacco dependence treatment plans with the patient and record on hospital systems
8. Follow up and record outcomes
- Keep contemporaneous notes on hospital IT systems to record activity, treatment plans and outcomes.
- Support the delivery of training to staff groups across the Trust for Tobacco ‘Very Brief Advice’
- Provide ad hoc advice to ward staff on the provision of nicotine replacement therapy products to manage nicotine withdrawal symptoms where appropriate.
- Support delivery and development of innovative ways of working with patients including the use of novel technologies.
- Analyse trends and highlight issues and problems and propose remedial actions using IT software and systems where appropriate.
- Uphold professional standards.
- Maintain confidentiality and data protection and model office standards to the wider team.
People Management and Development
- Work with minimal supervision, always operating within the assessed level of competence as set out by line manager.
- Be aware of how to report incidents, concerns or complaints and escalate any concerns or complexities to Health Improvement Manager, as appropriate
- Follow policies and participate in discussions on proposed changes to procedures, where appropriate.
- To support the delivery of tobacco dependence training to the wider multidisciplinary team across the Trust.
- Monitor, develop and evaluate patient feedback in order to make service improvement recommendations and learn from good practice and successes.
- Keep up to date with local and national policies and guidelines to implement best practice.
- To support other team members taking a shared approach to teamwork.
Patient Care Delivery
- Work within the agreed and relevant policies and procedures and know how to access them.
- To manage own caseload for daily inpatients smokers list and electronic referrals and their associate interpretation and administration, which will include identifying patients in electronic systems to check information and ward, booking appointments and completing Tobacco Dependency Consultations, documenting discussions, treatment plans and Nicotine Replacement administered and follow ups.
- Dispense Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) according to the Trust protocol.
- To be responsible for documenting patient care on EPR systems and clearly recording actions taken including follow up and mandatory reporting outcomes.
- To maintain detailed and accurate records (manual and electronic) that are consistent with legislation, policies and procedure, regarding interventions and advice given.
- Deal sensitively and politely with patients and their families face to face or by telephone.
- Undertake any duties necessary to support the high-quality service.
Learning and Development
- Attend mandatory training updates as required.
- Undertake training as necessary in line with the development of the post and as agreed with the line manager as part of the personal development process.
- Achieve and demonstrate agreed standards of personal and professional development within agreed timescales.
- Identify own learning needs and jointly plan training requirements with your line manager
- Participate in the Trust’s appraisal process to discuss how your role will help deliver the best possible care to our patients and help to deliver any changes in service.
This job description is an outline of the role and responsibilities. From time to time due to the needs of the service, we may ask you to flexibly undertake other duties that are consistent with your role and banding.
The job description and person specification may be reviewed on an ongoing basis in accordance with the changing needs of the department and the organisation.
