Today, Monday 14 December, HSJ announced the nominees for their 2021 Partnership Awards, with Anthony Nolan’s Patient Services team making the being shortlisted in the category of Best Not for Profit Working in Partnership with the NHS for our project ‘Beyond a stem cell transplant: ensuring long term support is available for patients’.
Since 2014, we have funded 18 healthcare professionals to raise the standard of post-transplant care in the busiest transplant UK centres. Those healthcare professionals provide nurse-led clinics, psychological support, and are an important dedicated point of contact providing access to high quality information and facilitating co-ordinated care. They are there to help Anthony Nolan’s overarching mission of ‘saving and improving the lives of patients with blood cancers and blood disorders’.
The project’s success was defined by an upward trend in the quality of life for patients, our cancer patient experience survey improvements ongoing funding and the introduction of new services to streamline into appropriate clinics and reduced waiting times, overcrowding and more co-ordinated care.
Lead nurse and project lead Hayley Leonard says: ‘From the beginning the aim of the programme has been to improve the patient experience of stem cell transplant, which can be achieved by having dedicated support. To receive recognition from HSJ for our continual strive towards that aim is incredible for Anthony Nolan’
‘Colleagues have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the need for post-transplant care and to bolster the case for any future investments in this area, which is vital to making sure patients have the best quality of life following a transplant.
‘The shortlisting of our project “Beyond a stem cell transplant” shows that the message is breaking through, and that is in no small way thanks to the determination of the Patient Services team, our patient advocates and our NHS partners, I have never felt prouder of my team.’