Dr Karen Campbell, UKONS President, reflects on the biggest UKONS Conference to date took place at the ICC Wales in Newport over the 17th and 18th of November. This featured more sessions and posters, more attendees and the largest sponsors exhibition the ever before. There will be a full review of the event in the next copy of Breaking News which will be released on 7th December. The conference also featured the UKONS Annual General Meeting where board elections and changes are formally ratified.
The Aspirant Cancer Career and Education Development programme (ACCEND) have created a suite of e-learning modules, specifically for pre-registration healthcare students, called ‘Foundations of Cancer Care’.
The Foundations of Cancer Care is available to all those with an NHS or UK university email address, or with an Open Athens account (https://learninghub.nhs.uk/catalogue/ACCEND) .
EONS Conferences are excellent places to network and compare practice across Europe as well as giving attendees access to ESMO sessions and exhibitions and I would strongly recommend attendance. They also encourage nurses to submit posters under a special ‘Cancer nursing’ category. EONS17 will take place in Barcelona on 14-16 September.
The UKONS Board are delighted to once again partner with the British Journal of Nursing to support the Oncology Nurse of the Year Award. Please send your nominations for this very competitive award.
After an incredibly busy 2023 working to digitise the UKONS SACT Competency Passport, we’re very pleased to announce that the system is live and rolling out – and the feedback from early users has been fantastic, this is set to be a tremendous resource for all SACT nurses.
To support you and your teams to get going, we have a range of events available to UKONS members – thanks to our sponsors B Braun for making all of these possible.
Next launch event at The Christie School of Oncology, 19th of January 2024 1-4:30 PM
Register here: Digital SACT Passpost Launch - Manchester
Report: 1st launch event, at The Royal Marsden, 18 October 2023
We were delighted to see almost 100 UKONS members from more than 40 different organisations come together to join us for the official launch of the Digital SACT Competency Passport.
The session included information about the history and context of the passport, the digital project, how the questions have been updated. The team also provided a full run-through of the new digital passport – plus a chance to network with colleagues from across the country.
Thanks to our hosts from The Royal Marsden and Kay Bell for hosting the event. A recording from the event will be made available online soon.
UKONS are pleased to announce the election to the board of two new members Dr Barry Quinn and Dr. Linda Sherwood. Following a board vote, Dr Mary Tanay will replace Dr Karen Campbell as the President-Elect later this year when Karen takes over the UKONS presidency.
All of the above changes will formally begin following our AGM at our conference in November 2023.
UKONS are proud to present the newly updated version 4 of our Acute Oncology Initial Management Guidelines. These guidelines have been reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team, with representation from all four nations and multiple organisations including, UKAOS, UKSB, BOPA, SoR and SAM. Thank you to everyone that provided feedback and contributed to this thorough review. We hope that they will continue to be utilised well within clinical practice and support staff to safely manage patients that require acute cancer care.
These guidelines relate to the initial assessment and immediate management of Acute Oncology patients, that is, patients presenting with an acute problem, demonstrating symptoms deemed as having been caused by:
It is emphasised that these guidelines focus on initial assessment at presentation and management for the first 24 hours.
Version 4 of our acute oncology initial management guidelines are now live and free to access to all UKONS members on the UKONS Website here via the Acute Oncology Members Interest Group (MIG) resource page.
The Fruit-fly Collective has a small core team of scientists, clinicians, artists and designers who collaborate with a range of experts. Their collaborators include nurses, scientific researchers, visual artists, medics, photographers, clinical psychologists, palliative care social workers, children and young people, and people who have been affected by cancer. Their main aim is to build new ways to support children, adults and families affected by cancer through creativity, education, research and communication.
UKONS President, Mark Foulkes, tweets: "The UKONS Board and the UK are hosting ECND23 in Scotland for the first time in many years. I think this gives an important message about the importance of UK cancer nursing in Europe and the strength across our four nations."
The UKONS Board were delighted to once again partner with the British Journal of Nursing to support the Oncology Nurse of the Year Award. Well done to all the nominees who entered submissions for this very competitive award.
This is a UKONS funded project by Edinburgh Napier University to generate evidence on the current potential occupational exposure to cytotoxic drugs and use of personal protection equipment in the UK.
