Job Description

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a confident, enthusiastic, and motivated individual to work within Clinical Oncology at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, in close collaboration secondary care organizations. Your primary responsibilities will be to act as patient advocate to overcome barriers to timely access to any part of the patient's cancer journey, hence minimizing any delays to treatment. You will directly communicate with patients and their families to organize appointments, advise on any concerns or queries and signpost the patient to relevant and applicable support. This may involve liaising local DGH's Macmillan and other support services, as well as members of the lung MDT and other tertiary treating centres. Your role is vital to streamline the patient journey and contribute to the improvement of both quality and experience.



It is essential to ensure close working relationships with medical, nursing, and allied health professionals for the Trusts lung multidisciplinary team. You will work autonomously and have strong communication and negotiation skills as well as commitment and compassion for patients and their quality of care and experience. You will be competent in data collation and input, with excellent IT skills across a broad range of systems which will include an element of data manipulation and analyzing.



The purpose of this role is to support the speciality Cancer team in implementing early treatment pathways for patients with a diagnosed cancer to achieve definitive treatment by day 62. The Navigator role will be involved from the receipt of the referral to the first definitive treatment.



The post holder will be expected to work across a range of IT systems to coordinate the booking of patient appointments. They will work both directly and indirectly with both patients and their carers to assist in coordinating the care of patients through their hospital care journey, to identify and manage any issues that patients may have with transport, lack of understanding about further investigations or preparations for treatment and to reduce the number of appointments that are missed by patients. It will be part of the Navigator role to help improve both patient compliance and experience.



The Christie is one of Europe's leading cancer centres, treating over 60,000 patients a year. We are based in Manchester and serve a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 15% patients are referred to us from other parts of the country.



We provide radiotherapy through one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world; chemotherapy on site and through 14 other hospitals; highly specialist surgery for complex and rare cancer; and a wide range of support and diagnostic services. We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years.



We run one of the largest early clinical trial units in Europe with over 300 trials every year. Cancer research in Manchester, most of which is undertaken on the Christie site, has been officially ranked the best in the UK.



DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES



Communications and Relationships

The post-holder will be required to:

Demonstrate a professional approach to work and to promote positive and collaborative working relationships with other departments/multidisciplinary teams across the Trust and other Hospital Trusts. Working collaboratively with the relevant treatment scheduling teams to provide a seamless service, which is responsive to patients', carers and relatives' needs. Communicate effectively with members of the multidisciplinary team and relevant personnel from other Hospital Trusts to avoid delays in pathways and to keep the patient always informed. Assist in triaging new appointments and arranging follow up appointments, scheduling treatments as directed by the clinical team. Build and maintain a close relationship with the Performance Team to assist in identifying and resolving pathway blockages. Ability to promote patient centred care and establish good relationships with patients and relatives/ carers and the clinical teams and wider MDT.

Planning and Organizational Skills

The post-holder will be required to:

Ensure that all aspects of care/interaction with patients, carers and relatives are documented in line with Trust policies on Trust systems and departmental databases. Assist the clinical team with audits/research. Participating in meetings as requested by the disease groups.

Responsibility for Patient Care

The post-holder will be required to:

Assist in triaging and arranging new and follow up appointments, scheduling treatments as directed by the clinical team. The ability to provide empathy and support to the patients, carers and relatives whilst signposting them to further services. Providing non-clinical advice to patients on the phone, being able to identify specific issues and having an awareness of when the patient requires urgent treatment or to be sign-posted to the appropriate resource in the hospital, other trusts or community.

Responsibility for Policy/Service Development

The post-holder will be required to:

Ensure all standard operating procedures relating to the service are regularly reviewed and revised as necessary. Develop new standard operating procedures for the service where required. Ensure standardisation across all specialties as appropriate.

Responsibilities for Human Resources

The post-holder will be required to:

Provide support and cover for absences, this at times may be across different specialities. * Take own responsibility for ensuring all their own mandatory training is always up to date.