Colleagues who support patients with breast pain shortlisted for prestigious HSJ award
The University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (UHDB) team involved in an innovative healthcare pilot that is improving access for care for patients with breast pain, while also easing pressure on cancer diagnostic services, are preparing to find out if they are the winners of a prestigious Health Service Journal (HSJ) Award this week.
Colleagues who are part of the East Midland Breast Pain Pathway (EMBPP) implementation team have been shortlisted as finalists for the 'Primary and Community Care Innovation of the Year' category for their collaborative work to support patients in the community who are experiencing breast pain.
The service was set up in 2020, following an increase in women attending hospital with breast pain as a sole symptom. As Mark Sibbering, Consultant Breast Surgeon at UHDB, explains, breast pain on its own is not usually an indication of breast cancer, so a dedicated service was created to ensure that those patients got the appropriate care they required, in a community care setting away from hospital, and unnecessary suspected cancer referrals were reduced.
Mr Sibbering said: "Around one in five women who were coming to us were only experiencing breast pain and it was alarming for them to be put on the cancer pathway, alongside patients who were experiencing more worrying symptoms like a lump in the breast. As a result, we were seeing increased diagnostic testing for breast cancer, which was unnecessary, so our aim was to create a service that was better for those patients, but also more efficient for our cancer services."
NHS England data has shown that each year around 130,000 women are placed on suspected cancer pathways because of breast pain alone, with 70-80% of women expected to experience this at some stage during their life; yet breast pain alone is not a concerning symptom in relation to breast cancer.
After delivering the first large pilot of Community Breast Pain Clinics in Derbyshire, examining patients who were experiencing breast pain and looking at their family history to determine if they are at an increased risk of breast cancer, clinics opened across the East Midlands and the team began sharing their practice with centres across England.
Mr Sibbering said: "We held the clinics in a community setting away from the breast unit in the hospital, which helped alleviate anxieties among the women we were seeing."
Pilots initially carried out locally, then regionally and nationally, showed that the service was both safe and sustainable while the patient feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with 99% of patients saying they would recommend the service to family and friends. One of the key benefits to patient experience is this dedicated service takes patients away from the 'diagnosis pathway' and allows them to feel reassured.
Mr Sibbering added: "There are so many benefits to this dedicated service. It is safe, cost-effective and we are not missing cancers or delaying cancer treatment. Instead, we are taking patients out of the breast cancer diagnosis pathway and freeing up capacity for other patients with more concerning symptoms."
The service now provides breast pain clinics in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, including UHDB sites Florence Nightingale Community Hospital, Samuel Johnson Community Hospital and Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital.
Lisa Rose, Breast Advanced Nurse Practitioner at UHDB, said the team are proud to have been recognised for the service, which has been a collaboration with input from partners including the East Midlands Cancer Alliance, the Association of Breast Surgery, the British Society of Breast Radiology and NHS England.
Lisa said: "Something we are really proud of is that even when the service is being delivered at other sites, the feedback remains the same and the service has only improved since we implemented it.
"It's been a lot of work by a lot of people over five years and we can clearly see the benefits for patients and for our service, so it is nice to be recognised for this work, which is making a real difference."
The team will attend the HSJ Awards ceremony on Thursday November 20, alongside two others from UHDB whose impactful work has seen them shortlisted: the award-winning team behind the procurement of our new electronic patient record (EPR) system, Nervecentre; and the Cardiometabolic service, which has seen a huge drop in waiting times thanks to work in integrated pharmacist-led lipid clinics.