Chemotherapy

Staffing
The continued growth of chemotherapy as a treatment modality for cancer has resulted in the increase of staff in both our specialist Cytotoxic Pharmacy Unit and our Chemotherapy Nursing Team.

This rise in activity has given us some problems with space and therefore building work has commenced (due to be completed in 2000/01) to extend the Pharmacy Unit in order to cope with ever increasing demands on the service.

Delivering services
Chemotherapy can be given to patients either at CCO (as an in-patient or out-patient) or at the patient's local hospital in one of our 11 peripheral clinics across Merseyside and Cheshire.

At present, space and time are limited in the peripheral clinics and more complex treatments have to be given on the Day Case Unit at CCO. Thus, as treatments change, there is an ebb and flow between these different facilities and, in the coming year, it is likely that changes in activity, particularly in breast and colorectal cancer, will lead to increasing pressure on the Unit. Managing chemotherapy services effectively is an ever increasing priority and, in order to facilitate this, a new post of Clinical Chemotherapy Services Manager has been created with responsibilities across in-patient and out-patient services. Additional treatment couches have been introduced into the Day Case Unit to reduce patient waiting times further.

Developments
New chemotherapy agents are under continuous development and over the past few years, a number have been shown to have significant advantages compared to existing treatment.

New drugs are expensive, but in the past three years, in partnership with our commissioning Health Authorities, we have been able to ensure that effective agents are available for our all patients, regardless of where they live.

Activity
The trend for numbers of patients receiving chemotherapy continues to rise and there has also been an increase in the complexity of treatments during the past 12 months.

Overall, chemotherapy activity has risen by 17.7% and, because in-patient facilities are finite, this has largely been reflected in an increase in out-patient numbers.