How are they going to reduce waiting time in the NHS to get the treatment for cancer? Thinking that there is an

Question: How are they going to reduce waiting time in the NHS to get the treatment for cancer? Thinking that there is an increase in cancer so more people diagnosed.
- Keywords:
  cancer,
  diagnosis,
  NHS,
  treatment
Asked by bury490dab on 5 Jul 2023.
- Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  They are planning to open more medical schools and train more nurses and doctors. it is going to be really difficult but hope that as time passes NHS wait list can decrease. Meanwhile we are working on new solutions to identify deadly infections as soon as possible so that it helps doctors to make quick decisions!
- Caroline Addey answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  This is a big problem that needs to be tackled in different ways. This includes getting more doctors and nurses trained; finding ways to get people home faster after going to hospital, adopting new / innovative ways of working which speed things up and ensuring that all different parts of the health system are talking to each other, share important information (securely and quickly)
- Blair Johnston answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  MRI scans are often used to diagnose or stage cancer or help with treatment planning. At the moment we are looking into using Artificial Intelligence to make our scans take less time (and look even better) so we can scan more patients and reduce the waiting times
- Sophie Shaw answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  My department is working on using liquid biopsies (which are blood samples) for lung cancer diagnosis instead of tumour samples – this is much much quicker to diagnose and recently was featured on BBC news – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65377533
- Edward Guy answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  Getting treatment is at the end of a complex ‘care pathway’ that involves several steps. These include: Finding a problem, getting referred to a specialist, initial evaluation, possible further investigations, deciding on the best treatment, and finally receiving that treatment (although the pathways doesn’t even end there, of course!).
  
  So, to improve the speed with which someone moves through that pathway, it is important to know where the bottlenecks are. Also, thankfully, many people who suspect they may have cancer, turn out to have something far less serious. Therefore, it is also important to screen out those people as early in the pathway as possible to reduce numbers who need further investigation.
  
  One approach currently being used is to relieve pressure on cancer doctors (oncologists) by involving other healthcare specialists such as nurses, to carry out some of the initial assessments and to request other tests where they suspect there may be a non-cancer cause. Where non-cancer patients can be screened out like this, it isn’t just good for reducing the time to treatment… it means those patients who were worried but turn out not to have cancer can receive the good news sooner as well.
- Cheryl Williams answered on 5 Jul 2023:
  
  I think the first solution would be to recruit more staff (doctors, nurses, radiographers, admin), and more GPs. Waiting lists have taken a big hit since surgeries and appointments were cancelled during the pandemic and it’s going to take a few years, if not longer, to get back to the kind of waiting times we were used to pre-COVID.
- Simon Anderson answered on 6 Jul 2023:
  
  Undoubtedly as discussed a key area is getting more bums on seats, of getting more of all professions to meet the demand on the service.
  
  As part of this there also needs to be diversification and novel thinking about how to use the staff that we currently have and those that we are training to the best of their capabilities within a good framework of management and support. For instance, thinking about cancer, there are now centres that have dedicated teams that look after heart patients undergoing cancer treatment- this helps streamline how they can get their treatment having had all the assessments they need to do this as safely as possible having thought about their specific risks.
  
  One of the great things about scientific careers, especially in healthcare, is there are always development in the roles be that making better of use of someone or creating a whole new avenue, for instance the advent of physicians associates.
- Hannah Scholes answered on 6 Jul 2023:
  
  There is a plan at the moment to open more medical schools and train/recruit 30% more doctors, nurses, and biomedical/healthcare science staff which will help, but not for a few years until the students have finished their training. Some hospitals have also started to run clinics on the weekends for patients having chemotherapy or radiotherapy to try to help reduce the backlog from covid.
- Lynne Benton answered on 6 Jul 2023:
  
  The key to cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment is multi faceted and needs a whole population change in the approach and how we view the disease.
  
  Prevention is a matter for everyone – understanding what environmental and lifestyle factors increase the risk of cancer – eg obesity, alcohol and other drugs, sun-exposure. Attending cancer screening programmes when invited and presenting to healthcare professionals if symptoms are of concern.
  
  Diagnosis – the earlier the diagnosis the better – again public awareness is key, large scale genetic screening projects such as the Galleri project which will help to identify the very earliest signs of cancer and new genomic testing of cancer tumours to be able to pin point the exact genetic mutation that has caused the cancer.
  
  Treatment – in future treatments will be much more bespoke – using the genomic testing results patients will be offered drug regimes that are matched to or very closely matched to treating the specific mutation causing their cancer. This should have the impact that more people will receive successful cancer treatments rather than being subjected to drug trials and various different treatment regimes in the hope that one of them works.
  
  So, given our aging population in the UK the incidence of cancer will go up because as we age the risk of mutations increase. But as the detection, diagnosis and treatment processes improve patients will be treated more effectively and more quickly so in theory reducing the number of patients in treatment.
  
  The Faster Diagnosis Standard for cancer will also drive improvement as will the digitisation of pathology to enable microscope images to be shared more easily and the use of AI in the detection.
  
  So please don’t be despondent
- Chigozie Onuba answered on 9 Jul 2023:
  
  Need to expand training places for all health care profession in the health service especially that of Biomedical Scientists and Clinical scientists and make bursary available for this courses so that students will be willing to take this courses and training up.
  
  Need to make apprentiship more readily available, if possible NHS employers will need to partner with their local schools and colleges to make this work.
  
  Basically better workforce planning and boosting of staff morale and retention rate including paying staff well will help too.
- Andrew Colman answered on 9 Jul 2023: last edited 10 Jul 2023 11:26 pm
  
  I am afraid to say that I have always found NHS medical culture repulsive. It runs on arrogance, incompetence, secrecy, bullying and intimidation.
  
  Many of the current problems the NHS now faces may relate to the condescending and patronizing attitude of many senior doctors towards non-medically qualified NHS colleagues and other professionals which often results in unproductive collaborations to try and fix things.
  
  I had to retire early because I was bullied out of my NHS job!
  
  It’s been wonderful to be a doctor for the last 37 years but I would not want future doctors to experience some of the problems I have encountered in the NHS.
  
  I advised my nephew against training as a doctor in the UK and he now works for the US Government in California ( He got 4 A*s at A-Level in mathematics, further mathematics, physics and chemistry from a state school, a first in his MSci degree in theoretical physics from University College London (UCL) and a PhD in astrophysics from the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge – out of competition from 800 other students! ). He’s the first astrophysicist to measure the mass of a white dwarf star using gravitational lensing which was the subject of his PhD thesis.
  
  Given the current and severe problems in our NHS, many practicising NHS doctors are advising their children not to pursue a medical career in the UK.
- Charlotte Ritson answered on 10 Jul 2023:
  
  We are getting better all the time at detecting cancer early, which is a great thing, because it means more people will have a better chance of survival. The downside to this is the pressure on our NHS, but we are constantly working on new technology to make the process of identifying and diagnosing cancer quicker and easier. Many of us here are working on new treatments which are also less burdensome on patients and the healthcare system. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to this one, though.
- Kip Heath answered on 16 Jul 2023:
  
  There are lots of ways. We need more NHS staff (not just doctors and nurses but also scientists, allied health professionals and pharmacists) so we need to train more but also stop the current ones from leaving.
  
  Then we need to fund the equipment used and create more space in the system.
- Clare Morrow answered on 24 Jul 2023:
  
  The government is planning on increasing staffing and training more – although those that attend hospital may not all have cancer.

Question: How are they going to reduce waiting time in the NHS to get the treatment for cancer? Thinking that there is an increase in cancer so more people diagnosed.

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