What haematology nursing involves...
Patients with malignant haematological disorders such as leukaemia present unique challenges. The intensive treatments and their side effects require excellent nurses capable of working in a dynamic clinical environment. A patient can be well at 10am and septic at 11am. The nursing care and response this demands provides haematology nurses with a broad range of basic and advanced nursing skills and knowledge. Our patients rely heavily on our skilled and caring nurses to journey through what are complex and challenging treatment experiences. Does all this make for interesting and rewarding nursing? Absolutely.
Could this be you?
Yes. Most of the nurses we employ join us as newly qualified or quite junior nurses. They leave us as highly skilled and confident individual nurses - set up for a great career.
Our reputation
Our national reputation for haematology nursing is deserved. It’s based on a professional but informal nursing culture aimed at developing individuals and team working. We pride ourselves on developing nursing-led services based around patient need. Our teams such as the Aphaeresis Service that provides a year-round on-call service and the central venous access team are examples of high-quality specialist care. We are fortunate to have such modern and well-designed buildings.
I can’t speak highly enough of all of our nursing teams as they give everything and more. In return, we aim to properly support and develop our staff to do the proper job our patients rely on them for. Quite simply, our nursing staff are critical to the safe running of our service.
Oncology at UCLH is a great place to practice cancer nursing. Being such a large tertiary referral cancer centre with many oncology cancer pathways for both rare and common tumours leading to UCLH ensures that no two days are the same. The number of patients receiving new and complex treatments results in the oncology nursing teams developing innovative nursing practices. This is both challenging and exciting and it is one of the reasons why I love working here to ensure oncology patients at UCLH receive the best care.
Oncology nursing at UCLH
The beauty of working at such a large cancer service as an oncology nurse means that you gain experience in rare as well as common cancers. Patients come to UCLH not only because we have a very good reputation but also because sometimes we are the only centre with the expertise.
We specialise in almost all tumour types which includes; a large sarcoma service, a brain tumour centre, a leading national late effects service, and specialist urology, gynae, lung, GI, H&N, lymphoedema, and CUP services. Whether you work in outpatients, daycare, radiotherapy, on the wards or as part of one of the specialist teams you will broaden your oncology knowledge and expertise.
Many of our nurses start with us as a newly qualified nurse, others move to oncology because they wish to specialise in cancer nursing and others simply come for a change. Most nurses who join us stay, and progress very successfully no matter what their previous experience.
Our reputation
We are a large service and are always keen to meet motivated people who want to work together to meet not only our service needs, but also their individual professional development needs. We have, for a long time, supported a nurse-led approach to care in close collaboration with the multidiscplinary team. The inpatient wards, central venous access service, day and ambulatory care service and the various clinical nurse specialist (CNS) teams are all examples of high-quality specialist oncology nursing care provided at UCLH. I am very proud of our nursing teams, who are friendly, approachable, compassionate and highly skilled. Their dedication and enthusiasm, to ensure that all patients receive high-quality and safe care, is second to none.
