Macmillan Cancer Nurses

Better level of care from Macmillan Cancer Nurses with G2 Speech. For many people affected by cancer, Macmillan nurses are a valued and trusted source of expert information, advice and support – free of charge. There are more than 3,452 Macmillan nurses across the UK, working both in hospitals and in the community.

For many people affected by cancer, Macmillan nurses are a valued and trusted source of expert information, advice and support – free of charge. There are more than 3,452 Macmillan nurses across the UK, working both in hospitals and in the community.

All Macmillan nurses are registered nurses with at least five years’ experience, including two or more years in cancer or palliative care. Macmillan nurses work in many NHS hospitals and in NHS Northumbria the team specialises in cancer and palliative care, providing support and information to people with cancer, and their families, friends and care givers, from the point of diagnosis onwards.

Issue

What has been an issue for the Macmillan nurses at NHS Northumbria is that they are based in different sites and do not share a central information system. This has meant that the nurse taking a call from a concerned patient might not be the one who has the case history of the caller and because the notes are traditionally paper based there was no way for the nurses to look up a patient’s history quickly and easily. This limited the level of detailed support that the nurses could give over the phone.

Solution

NHS Northumbria wanted to achieve trust-wide report turnaround times of less than 48 hours, and worked with G2 Speech to implement the MediSpeech speech recognition-based dictation and transcription system (powered by SpeechMagic from Nuance) across the trust. This has proved a major success in terms of cost savings and speeding up the time of notes and reports being written and dispatched from consultants – with the added benefit of all the notes being kept on a central server.

This central system has enabled the Macmillan nurses to have secure log-ins to the notes of those patients they deal with.
Now whichever nurse takes a call – the relevant patient’s interactions with their consultant can be consulted so that the most appropriate advice can be given. The Macmillan nurses can also dictate their notes from their conversations with patients so that future interactions are better informed and the system helps improve patient note security as there are less paper copies made.

What the nurses are saying

Amanda Walshe, Macmillan Breast Care Nurse Specialist at NHS Northumbria said: “Using the G2 Speech system has really improved the service we offer in many ways. Firstly it is now quicker and easier to record our notes. Not only do patients no longer have to wait so long to get their letters but we can also paste our notes straight into the national Somerset Cancer Register (SCR) which is a single database used to assist in diagnosis and management. This helps stop duplication of information being collected at different points on the patient pathway and allow us to work more efficiently. This is just one example of the sort of additional benefit that Trusts are experiencing from using G2 Speech’s MediSpeech solution and the speech recognition technology.”

Amanda summarised: “Using the G2 Speech system has really improved the service we offer in many ways.”