Topic
Date published
30/04/2025
Dr James Rathbone presented the team’s work from the The East Midlands Cancer Alliance Centre for Psychosocial Health (EMCA CPH), run by Nottinghamshire Healthcare, showcasing a range of innovative service developments designed to improve psychological support for cancer patients.
One of these was the psychological skills training for cancer care colleagues, funded by the NIHR ARC East Midlands. This training ensures staff have the skills to support patients’ psychological wellbeing at an earlier stage, helping to prevent symptoms from worsening.
Many people living with or beyond cancer experience impacts on psychosocial health, quality of life, functioning and broader health outcomes. Timely, accessible, and personalised psychosocial support can have a significant positive impact on a broad range of health and social aspects of life, as a way of addressing this key, long term need for people affected by cancer.
The team have also worked to maximise patient choice and accommodate preferences, such as the gender of their clinician, day and time of appointments and frequency of sessions.
The service also offers a range of therapeutic approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Family and Systemic Therapy and, Motivational Interviewing, to ensure patients can access the treatments that best suits their needs.
Dr Rathbone said: "As a service we are committed to providing patients with the best possible care and support, and I was really proud to be able to present our fantastic innovations at this national conference and to win the award."
This recognition at BPOS adds to the growing profile of the EMCA CPH, which has also recently been shortlisted for the HSJ Digital Awards in the “Improving Mental Health through Digital” category, with winners to be announced in June 2025.
All patients are also invited to participate in a randomised controlled clinical trial running in the service. The trial explores benefits of a single session intervention to prepare patients for psychological therapy which is delivered within two weeks of referral for this support. This session offers key information on how patients can gain the most benefit from psychological therapy and aims to support patients to start making beneficial changes while waiting for their initial appointment.
Therapy progress is routinely reviewed through discussions, allowing the team to identify early if there has been no improvement or worsening of symptoms. This enables timely adjustments to the therapeutic approach, ensuring patients receive the psychological support that works best for them.
The team’s work is an example of how research and service development can come together to deliver real-world benefits for patients and the NHS.
