Cancer Services in the Western NSW Local Health District (LHD) have experienced considerable growth and transformation over the last decade with improvements in locally-based care, the development of radiotherapy treatment services, with a dramatic expansion of the workforce and cancer clinical trials. Despite being one of the largest geographical LHDs in NSW, the LHD has a population of only 278,800 people.
Transitioning cancer services in the District from a model of care where nurses coordinated services supported by fly-in fly-out metropolitan medical specialists to locally based specialist medical, nursing, allied health and administrative teams, has been arduous, exciting and challenging. The implementation of oncology information systems has been vital to the provision of high quality, coordinated care. People in our local communities now rarely leave the district for cancer care.
The focus has been on:
These are underpinned by a focus on meeting the needs of the Aboriginal people with cancer and their families.
The imperative to provide cancer services as close to home as possible has required teams to continue to grow and to meet new and changing demands. A commitment to provide outreach consultation and treatment services relies on a specialist cancer workforce which brings challenges including managing high work volumes and the inability to recruit nurses with oncology training. This has led to the need to be innovative by ‘growing our own’ specialist workforce. The enthusiasm of individuals and teams has been vital to navigate resourcing and governance issues associated with this significant growth and change.