Project summary
A focus group gathered feedback on whether patients would be better served by seeing a nurse practitioner rather than a consultant for their 2-year follow-up. By offering this alternative, waiting times were reduced to one week for urgent referrals.
Project Dates
Start Date: 01/07/2004
End Date: 31/08/2004
Location of project
Grampian
Area of healthcare
Specialist care
Target groups
Women post two years surgery for breast cancer
Guidelines followed
Informing, Engaging and Consulting the Public in Developing Health & Community Care Policies & Services.
Approaches used
Focus groups, Surveys
Aims and objectives
A reduction in the length of time women had to wait for their post-2 year consultation following surgery for breast cancer
A reduction in the workload of staff in the breast clinic
What we did
Increased waiting times and workload of the breast clinic in conjunction with a reduction of junior doctors’ hours highlighted a need to look at the feasibility of women post two years' surgery seeing a nurse practitioner rather than a consultant.
A focus group was set up, which was attended by 14 patients. The first half of the session was used to gain the opinions on nurse-led clinics, discuss anxieties, advantages/ disadvantages and raise questions.
In the second half, two of the nurse practitioners attended to answer patients' questions.
Evaluation
The focus group highlighted patients’ concerns about nurse-led clinics. This provided valuable feedback and questions to inform patient information. The nurse-led clinics saw 1,000 women in their first year of operation.
The service has since been evaluated using questionnaires. Of 184 questionnaires sent out, 160 were returned (a response rate of 87%). The surveys indicated that the service is popular, with a high level of satisfaction (93%). As of 1 October 2006 waiting times for urgent referrals are within one week. Routine waiting times have been reduced from a high of 18 weeks to 4–5 weeks.
Plans for the future
Waiting times at the Symptomatic Breast Service continue to be monitored.