The lecture – Can palliative care meet the challenge of care for persons with long-term chronic illness versus remaining in our end-of-life corner? – was given by Dr Diane Meier, Director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Dr Meier spoke at length about the use of resources in treating serious illness. As life expectancy has risen dramatically since the early 1900′s, more people today die of dementia, frailty and degenerative disease rather than cancer. Yet in terms of government spending (in the UK as well as the US), more money is spent on the likes of chemotherapy than on palliative care.  If more focus was given to palliative care in the early stages of care after diagnosis, people would be able to cope better with their illness thereby removing their reliance on emergency care which often results in hospital admissions rather than patients being able to remain at home.

Most interesting were her thoughts on the definition of palliative care, which has become  defined in terms of end of life care. Dr Meier’s assertion is that palliative care should be seen as helping people live better and longer, rather than as soley in the realm of the final weeks/months before death.

She would like to see palliative care defined as: ‘Improving quality of life for those living with serious diseases’

which is clearly aligned with our mantra at Dimbleby Cancer Care: ‘Making life better for people living with cancer’.

We focus on improving quality of life – be that through complementary therapies, advice or psychological and emotional support – which has an essential place in end of life care but is also important from the moment of diagnosis and at every stage of the patient pathway.

Dr Meier referred to recent research where ‘Independence’ was ranked the most important factor (76%) to those dealing with serious illness. ‘Staying alive’ ranked last. Similarly, bereaved families were asked to recall the most important factors in the care they received: ‘quality of care’ ranked highest.

Talking to patients about their wants and needs is integral to providing gold standard palliative care. Patient focus is key to the work supported by Dimbleby Cancer Care.

My Name Is Not Cancer® was established in 2011 and their aim is to empower anyone affected by cancer, helping them retain identity and a sense of self in the face of adversity, whether newly diagnosed with cancer, undergoing treatment, recovered or life limited; regardless of age, gender, faith or culture – helping people understand a little of what it is like to have cancer, and to not be defined by it.

MNINC Identity Day is being held everywhere, on Saturday 4th May 2013, to celebrate the identity of individuals who have been affected by cancer: any cancer type, all ages, any nationality; those fighting cancer, survivors, individuals loved and lost; relatives, friends, carers, healthcare professionals and support services. Anyone touched by cancer.

My Name Is NOT Cancer ask that everyone (who knows someone) affected by cancer, wear a butterfly on MNINC Identity Day, and focus on everything that makes a person unique, not on cancer. Butterflies can be on an item of clothing (even a pair of socks) a piece of jewellery, hair accessory, tattoo (over 18’s only please who are sure they want a tattoo!)  and MNINC have a limited number of butterfly badges for this event (email admin@mynameisnotcancer.com to order yours!)

We are delighted to have been asked to take part because we know how overwhelming a cancer diagnosis can be and how quickly life can become entirely focused on the illness, not the person. So if you or someone you love has been affected by cancer then show your support on 4th May if you can. Wear your butterflies loud and proud and let everyone know that cancer does not define a person!

MNINC will be encouraging people to take a picture of their butterfly to send to their Twitter page (@TeamMNINC #MNINC#IdentityDay) upload to My Name Is NOT Cancer website, or post on their facebook page, and we hope you’ll join us on Saturday 4th May and support the MNINC ethos that:

• YOU STAND OUT… your illness doesn’t!
• Survivorship starts NOW!
• Communication is key!

Please note that whilst this is an awareness campaign, what is most important is that we all recognise that MNINC also encourages individuals to donate to a cancer cause close to their heart.

So, if you’ve been affected by throat cancer or if there’s another charity which is special to you and your family, you can donate to them!  Check out MNINC list of partners, support Dimbleby Cancer Care, or if there’s another organisation that means a lot to you, make May the 4th a day to donate to them and make a difference to those affected by cancer.

Every penny really does make a difference and so does letting the world know that My Name Is Not Cancer!

The 2012 Annual Report gives a really clear picture of how the service is helping people living with cancer.

The Information Service had its second busiest year to date in 2012. Over the course of the year the Information Team helped over 3,040 people either dealing with a cancer diagnosis themselves, or that of a loved one. The drop-in centres at Guy’s and St Thomas’ received over twice the number of cases face to face than those who called for advice.

Alongside the drop-in centres, the Benefits Advice clinics held on both sites continue to be much in demand. The current waiting list is essential to ensure that patients access the most appropriate form of help. Patients can be referred to the Macmillan benefits advice helpline with more basic enquiries, allowing the DCC advisor to concentrate on those patients needing specific help regarding more complex claims.

A major project in 2012 has been on the roll out of Information Prescriptions as recommended by the National Cancer Action team and Professor Mike Richards – full information on this service can be found in the March-May 2013 edition of The DCC Times available to download at www.dimblebycancercare.org.

The Complementary Therapy Service continues to provide aromatherapy, massage and reflexology treatments to patients and to carers who access the service by either direct enquiry or by referrals from the oncology or palliative care teams.

The complementary therapists work at both St Thomas’ and Guy’s Hospitals to offer therapies:

• to inpatients for symptom relief and emotional support
• To patients attending the Cancer Day Unit to help relieve anxiety and provide supportive care during chemotherapy
• To outpatients attending the Dimbleby Cancer Care Centre for a series of six appointments

In addition, the complementary therapy team offers a Relaxation and Stress Management programme over a five week period.

The Psycho-Oncology Support Team (POST) also had a very busy 2012 at the Dimbleby Cancer Care Centre not just in terms of their clinical work, but also new training responsibilities. In 2012 the POST team received over 1,000 new referrals of patients and carers needing psychological support.

After the retirement of Margaret Evison – who has now become a member of the Board of Trustees of Dimbleby Cancer Care – Sue Smith was recruited to lead the team and took up the post of consultant clinical health psychologist and clinical coordinator in November 2012.

As well as working with patients themselves, the Psycho-Oncology Support Team support the clinical and staff teams at the cancer centre who are at the forefront of cancer treatment and care through regular supervision and meetings:

• Clinical nurse specialists in haematology, breast cancer, lung cancer, gynaecology are offered monthly supervision.
• POST clinicians attend the weekly meetings of the inpatient and community palliative care teams and of the haematol-oncology service.
• The staff nurses on Blundell Ward, Samaritan Ward and Hedley Atkins Ward are offered support/supervision with the psychological issues raised by their work.
• Cancer centre physiotherapists and occupational therapists have monthly supervision with the clinical psychologist from POST.
• The research nurses in the Early Phase Trial Team have supervision with a psychotherapist from POST.
• Cancer care managers, who offer telephone support to survivors of breast cancer and prostate cancer, are supervised by a POST clinician.
• The children’s services counsellors at the Evelina Children’s Hospital, who work with bereaved parents, and parents of children who have life-limiting illness, are supervised by POST clinicians.

Treatments available for patients or carers (delivered to individuals, couples or families) include:

• Cancer counselling
• Existential psychotherapy
• Grief therapy
• Psychodynamic psychotherapy
• Family and systemic therapy
• Psychosexual & Relationship counselling
• Cognitive-behaviour therapy
• Pharmacotherapy for psychiatric disorders
• Joint working with community mental health teams, or general liaison psychiatry teams for inpatients of KHP
• Brief intervention for alcohol misuse and dependence

Many aspects of the model of care developed over the last 15 years at Dimbleby Cancer Care will now be more influential across the 17 NHS Trusts in South and West London with creation of the new London Cancer Alliance.

Overall the Dimbleby Cancer Care Information and Support Services performed well in the 2012 Outpatient surveys. When asked the following questions, 100% of respondents answered yes:

Did you have confidence & trust in staff treating you?

Was your dignity & respect maintained by staff treating you? 

Did you get answers to important questions from staff? 

Were you as involved as you wished in decisions about your care? 

Was there enough privacy during your consultation?

Importantly, nearly 100% of people asked said they would recommend the outpatients service to friends and family.  One patient noted “The Dimbleby [Cancer Centre] is well run and I am deeply grateful for the guidance and counselling I received”.

Another wrote, “[the counsellors were] very helpful and helped put things in perspective… helping me work through the trauma of my treatment and condition, giving me more control in my life and helping me to move on and enjoy all that life has to offer with manageable strategies”.

As we move into 2013, with your continued support, Dimbleby Cancer Care will be able to continue to fund and support the cancer care services offered at Guy’s and St Thomas’ as work begins on the state of the art KHP Cancer Care Centre at Guy’s, due to open in 2016.

The basis of psycho-oncology is about treating the person as a whole, not just the disease. A cancer diagnosis can affect a patient on many different levels, impacting their lives and the lives of those around them in ways they wouldn’t have expected.

At Dimbleby Cancer Care we recently received a thank you letter from a patient who wanted to pass on her gratitude to the psychotherapist who had helped her through her diagnosis and treatment. Talking about the day she was diagnosed she says, “I really didn’t understand what cancer really meant. I understood the physical damage it had done to my body but I wasn’t at all prepared for cancer echoing aspects of my emotional life”.

At her follow up oncology appointment she was asked by the nurse how she was. Many people are so overwhelmed that often this is an impossible question to answer. But she did. “I told her the truth. I was frightened:  frightened of radiotherapy, of chemotherapy, of my children and I ending up on the street. Frightened that I would die.”

She was then referred to the psycho-oncology service at Dimbleby Cancer Care Support and Information Services where she has been attending sessions with one of our therapists, without whom she doesn’t know how she would have otherwise coped.

“[The sessions with the therapist] have been able to get me through the emotional impact of cancer and on a journey that has helped me [find] hope. I initially expected psychotherapy to fix me quickly, however psychotherapy has helped me accept that I had cancer and accept that I can slowly emerge from depression and accept that cancer is a journey that I can begin to recover from not just physically but emotionally too”.

She goes on to say, “The work of the psycho-oncology team is truly invaluable. Without it I know my life would not be as it is now, on what I call the ‘forward road’. Thank you.”

For further information on the services available at Guy’s and St Thomas’ please visit www.dimblebycancercare.org or call 020 7188 7188/5918 or to find out what is available in your own area please contact your local hospital or Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

In the recent National Cancer Survey, GSTT ranked 2^nd of the London hospitals.

One of the key issues discussed was how information is given to patients. Feedback from patients can be that they do not feel they always receive the right information about their diagnosis and treatment and the options available to them.  Part of the issue here can be that in fact they are bombarded with so much information that they cannot take it all in. It is therefore essential that throughout the ‘patient pathway’ there is good communication between patients and the healthcare professionals to ensure that clear concise information is always given, patients are asked at every stage of their treatment whether they have the information they need and that patients feel able to ask for clarification of anything they are unsure of.

Jody Warner-Rogers, Lead for mental health, Cancer CAG went onto to discuss the need to patients to feel supported on all levels – practically and emotionally – throughout the patient pathway. “Patients tell us that they care about their experience of care as much as clinical effectiveness and safety. They want to feel informed, supported and listened to so that they can make meaningful decisions and choices about their care. They want to be treated as a person”.

The work of the Psycho-Oncology Support Team (POST) at Dimbleby Cancer Care at St Thomas’s Hospital plays a huge role in supporting cancer patients, their carers and families in this way. Emotional support and psychological care are essential to quality healthcare and treating the ‘person’.  For some people, existing underlying psychological issues can be exacerbated by a cancer diagnosis, similarly these issues can be a direct result and reaction to a diagnosis for someone who has never experienced mental health issues before.

Catherine Dale, Programme Manager for Patient Centred Care, spoke further about the needs of cancer patients and how it is important to focus on people “as people who just happen to have cancer”.  The importance of living as normal a life as possible can directly influence a patient’s ability to deal with what is happening to them.  Again she emphasised the need to inform patients at every step of the way, over and over again about what is happening and why. The overload of information can be so baffling that it is essential to make sure treatments and choices are explained properly and clearly until they are understood.

If you would like further information on the support services offered by Dimbleby Cancer Care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, please contact the Dimbleby Cancer Care Drop-In Centres on 020 7188 7188 / 5918.

On behalf of the family, David Dimbleby said “We are delighted that our father has been recognised in this way.  It makes London so interesting to know where people lived. Long live the blue plaque scheme.”

Richard, had a 30 year career in radio and television. By the time of his death at the age of 52, he had become the nation’s most famous broadcaster. He joined the BBC in 1936 as its first reporter – a “news observer” as he was called – filing on-the-spot reports from all over Britain and soon establishing his reputation as a ground-breaking broadcaster. He became the BBC’s first war correspondent and reported from some fourteen countries during the Second World War, notably from the Middle East, with Bomber Command, when he recorded the first broadcast description of a bombing raid (Berlin in 1943). Two years later, he was the first reporter to describe the horror of the Belsen concentration camp. Later he was among the first to enter Berlin, where he broadcast from the ruins of Hitler’s bunker.

Perhaps Dimbleby’s greatest impact was on the fledgling medium of television: he was the BBC’s commentator at the Victory Parade of June 1946, the funerals of George VI, Queen Mary and President Kennedy and the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, a landmark event in the history of British broadcasting which attracted 20 million viewers. Another of his memorable commentaries was on Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965, when he himself was gravely ill. From 1955 until his death, Dimbleby anchored the BBC’s new flagship current affairs programme Panorama; among his best remembered of these broadcasts was the spoof documentary on spaghetti growing shown on April Fools’ Day in 1957. He was also anchorman for the BBC’s coverage of the 1955, 1959 and 1964 general elections.

Dimbleby was born into a journalistic family; his grandfather was the owner of the Richmond and Twickenham Times and it remained in the family until 2002. His first job was on this paper, when his father was editor; it was here that he met his future wife, Dilys. Dimbleby then graduated to the Bournemouth Echo and the Advertisers’ Weekly, before joining the BBC in 1936 as a sub-editor in the news department. After the war, he left the BBC’s payroll to become editor-in-chief, and later Managing Director, of the family newspaper firm. He worked freelance for the BBC from then on, becoming a fixture on the radio programmes Twenty Questions and Down Your Way, for which programme he reckoned to have interviewed five thousand people.

Early in 1960, Dimbleby noted the first symptoms of what turned out to be testicular cancer. Despite treatment and a period of remission, the cancer returned, but he worked until just a few weeks before his death, when he went public with his illness which was still largely taboo. When he died in December 1965, his memorial service at Westminster was broadcast live by the BBC and shown later on ITV as well. He is the only broadcaster to have been honoured with a plaque in Poets Corner. After his death, using funds donated from the public, his family set up the Richard Dimbleby Cancer Fund, re-launched as Dimbleby Cancer Care in 2008.

Jonathan Dimbleby, chair of Dimbleby Cancer Care added: “I think my father would be delighted that the projects supported by Dimbleby Cancer Care, which were made possible initially as a result of public donations after his death, continue to this day. This is due in large measure to that original support and to the funds we continue to seek to sustain this vital work.”’

Howard Spencer, blue plaques historian said: “Dimbleby was at the forefront of the BBC’s early television coverage of current affairs and politics and became one of the best known post-war television commentators. At his death, a tribute book published by the BBC ventured that ‘great broadcasters are ephemeral. They are enjoyed and, sooner or later, forgotten.’ Nearly half a century later, this has been proved wrong: Dimbleby’s work is not only remembered, but frequently cited as having set a benchmark for broadcasting standards.”

Tickets are £50 per person and include a drinks and canapes reception hosted by Jonathan and David Dimbleby prior to the recital by celebrated tenor Fabio Armiliato.

For further information please contact robin.pritchard@dimblebycancercare.org.

Full details of the programme can be found below:

This concert will be approximately two hours in duration with a 20-minute interval.

Performers

Fabio Armiliato, tenor

Marco Boemi, piano

Programme

Puccini

Ch’ella mì creda from La fanciulla del West

Tosti

Ideale

Scarlatti

Sento nel core

Pietri

Lo conosco un giardino from Maristella

Tosti

Non t’amo più

Puccini

E lucevan le stelle from Tosca

Beethoven

Adelaide

Tosti

Segreto

Cilea

L’anima ho stanca from Adriana Lecouvreur

Tosti

L’ultima canzone

Donaudy

O del mio amato bene

Verdi

Dio! Mi potevi scagliar from Otello

About this concert

Italian tenor Fabio Armiliato, who has been garnering acclaim on the world’s leading opera stages and is soon to star in a new Woody Allen film, makes a highly anticipated appearance at this Rosenblatt Recital with a programme including arias from Pietri’s Maristella, Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, and Verdi’s Otello.

Launched today, The People’s Operator (TPO) is a new UK mobile operator that combines great mobile deals, coverage and customer service with the ability to support charities, community groups and other good causes throughout the UK.

As a launch partner, Dimbleby Cancer Care are teaming up with TPO to help spread the word.

TPO matters because 25% of its profits are given away to the TPO Foundation to go to good causes like ours. Better yet, customers who join through Dimbleby Cancer Care can direct TPO to give 10% (after VAT) of their monthly mobile spend straight to our organisation.

We’ll follow up soon with more news on The People’s Operator. Until then, you can find out more about the company at www.thepeoplesoperator.com

Planning permission was granted last week by Southwark Council, with the demolition work due to begin at the site in spring 2013. The new building will be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for oncology outpatients and a brand new Dimbleby Cancer Care Centre will be part of the ground floor or ‘Welcome Zone’. We have been involved in the planning process from the beginning and the new centre will further establish Dimbleby Cancer Care as a key part of integrated cancer services at GSTT.

As with the development of the Cancer Day Unit at Guy’s which opened in 2011, the Patient Group has played a huge part in the planning process of the new building. Patient experience is key to creating a service and an environment that delivers world class cancer care, and it was great to see everyone last night now that the Cancer Treatment Centre has passed the crucial planning stage.

Now the real work can begin! Be sure to expect many updates from us over the coming months as the demolition work on the current site gets started.

Tickets are priced at £50 each, available exclusively through Dimbleby Cancer Care, and include an invitation to a drinks and canapés reception before the performance, attended by David and Jonathan Dimbleby.

Proceeds from ticket sales and donations on the night go to Dimbleby Cancer Care.

For more details please contact robin.pritchard@dimblebycancercare.org