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Acute Medicine and Acute Oncology Subgroup  SAM/UKAOS

 please follow this link to find further information about this group

 

Acute Medicine and Emergency Care services have a vital role in the management of acutely unwell cancer patients and are service that is there 24/7

•Acute Cancer care is bigger than traditional Acute Oncology and is growing year on year

•Effective Acute Oncology requires multidisciplinary collaborative working underpinned by Acute medicine

•Acute Oncology Services need to place greater focus on the front door, building a 7 option for SDEC that reduces the need for inappropriate ED

•Acute Oncology needs to become an integral part of the Acute Medical Unit

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UKAOS are committed to supporting the development of 24/7 acute oncology services and wish to become a multidisciplinary force.

 

Acute care toolkit 7: Acute oncology on the acute medical unit

The Royal College of Physicians recognised that advances in cancer management continue to improve patient outcomes, but this has been accompanied by a steady increase in emergency admissions with disease- or treatment-related complications. The acute medical unit (AMU) currently shoulders much of this burden. Providing efficient and excellent care to this complex patient group in a busy AMU presents a key challenge. A good working partnership between the AMU and acute oncology service (AOS) can result in a significant improvement in patient care together with opportunities for admission avoidance and early discharge.

 

Useful Links:

 

Same Day Emergency Care is the provision of investigation and/or treatment within the same day for non-elective patients who would traditionally have been admitted to a hospital bed, this has huge benefits including:

  • Improved patient experience by ensuring that patients are seen and assessed in a single journey without a requirement for admission into hospital. 

  • Avoiding unplanned and longer than necessary stays in hospitals. 

  • Improved patient flow and prevents crowding of departments to reduce the potential of corridor care, nosocomial infection, reduced quality of care for patients and maintain patient safety. 

As you can see an established SDEC service has huge benefits for patients and patient flow. We hope that for staff professionally it will improve satisfaction within their roles with patients being seen in the right place, at the right time by the right service.

Dr Ernie Marshall took part in the North West Urgent Emergency Care and Cheshire & Merseyside STP SDEC Workshop in March 2021.

He has shared this link to the recorded session.

I think we can all see how important it is that acute oncology patients are included in the SDEC service and that acute oncology teams and services could support the development of pathways and protocols for patient management

The Future NHS Collaboration Platform hosts the SDEC Community of Practice, you can register and join this workspace.

Dr Fiona Wisniacki is SDEC Co-Lead for the National Team. She has been in this role since September 2020 following a 7 year history of clinically leading EDs and SDECs and line managing Emergency Medicine and Acute Physicians.

Click here to read her blog the first for the NHS SDEC Collaboration platform. 

 

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