Blood Cancer Awareness Month at King's Health Partners
September is Blood Cancer Awareness Month. To mark the month, staff from across our partnership have blogged about how we’re working collaboratively to improve care for people with blood cancer.
Working collaboratively to improve blood cancer care
Dr Piers Patten and Dr Matthew Streetly, both Consultant Haematologists at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, blog about their respective specialisms and how collaborative working across our partnership is improving the way we care for people with blood cancer. The blog explores the benefits of our new Joint GP Referral Guide for Adult Haematology and highlights the release of the new Pan-London guidelines for managing haematological malignancies.
Blood cancer: supporting mind and body
Surabhi Chaturvedi, Psychotherapist at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s Haematology Department, blogs about the emotional impact of being diagnosed with a blood cancer as well as the importance of supporting people’s mental wellbeing throughout the course of their illness. In her blog Surabhi discusses the importance of distinguishing emotional distress from mental illness and the role of psychotherapy in a cancer setting.
CAR-T cell therapy – a new era in cancer treatment
Dr Reuben Benjamin, Consultant Haematologist at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, blogs about a how a new immunotherapy is set to transform care for blood cancer patients. Chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T cell) therapy is a new treatment for cancer where immune cells (T cells) are collected from patients and genetically modified to destroy cancer cells.
Giving people with blood cancer a voice
Professor Claire Harrison, Consultant Haematologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, blogs about the power of the patient voice in improving blood cancer care. In her blog Professor Harrison discusses how her work in the myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) clinic has been greatly influenced by the patient group MPN Voice.
[Click image to view full infographic]
One team working in blood cancer care
Heather Gilmour, Network Lead for the King’s Health Partners Heamatology Institute, discusses how our partnership is using one team working to provide blood cancer care closer to home. The blog explores why providing care closer to home is important to patients and details three different pilot schemes which area being rolled out to make this a reality.
The King’s Health Partners Haematology Institute is aiming to bring together our strengths in clinical service, research, and education to deliver exceptional outcomes for haematology patients. Our vision is to develop cures and vaccinations for haematological conditions so that future generations do not have to face lives with these diseases.