Other treatments for lung cancer are chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Supportive care provision must be made for this patient:
- Hospital teams, including the Clinical Nurse Specialists for lung cancer patients
- Primary Health Care Team would provide for palliative care at home
- General Practitioner should be informed within 24 hours of the diagnosis, treatment plan and medication.
There will be an on-going care as well; the purpose of this care is to support the patient and family, the appropriate investigation and management of new problems and/or disease progression and the on-going surveillance of patients with pleural effusion from an unknown primary.
Following a surgical resection there should be regular follow up at 6 weeks, and every 6 months for the first two years and then every twelve months for a total of 5 years. This may be most appropriate in a Nurse led clinic.
Patients who receive radiotherapy or chemotherapy should have regular contact during the treatment schedule. Continued follow up if necessary can either be with the original referring physician, oncologists or Nurse led.
Patients must have open access to the Lung Cancer Nurse/Key worker by telephone and, if necessary, at a clinic. The Nurse will assess and arrange for appropriate investigation and referral to the Chest Physician or Oncologist.
Patients who have palliative treatment may be referred to the Specialist Palliative Care (hospice) team.
He/ she will be offered:
- Care at his/ her GP surgery provided by doctors and nurses.
- Full information about his/ her condition and how to control it
- Involvement in making decisions about his/ her treatment
- Regular checks to ensure that his/ her cancer is under good control and he/ she is getting the right treatment (which should be at least once a year)
- A written personal lung cancer action plan agreed with his/ her doctor or nurse
- X- rays
- Scans
- Medications
- Professional advice
The aim of care pathways.
- Provide best evidenced-based care
- Facilitate translation of national directives into local practice
- Improve multi-disciplinary and multi-agency communication
- Sustain and make equitable quality standards
- Reduce variance in practices
- Improve clinician/patient communication and satisfaction
- Identify research and development questions
- Involve team members in service development
CARE PLAN
A care plan is drawn up to detail; it lets health professionals know who is going to do what and when, together with the details of all agencies involved, such as telephone numbers.
Individuals with long-term conditions can have a care plan if request for one.
A care plan is an agreement between the patient and the health professional (and/or social services) to help them manage their health day-to-day.
Individuals with long-term conditions can take part in making their care plan. It supports to assess what care you need and how it will be provided to them.
The care plan is to help people, rather than help the GP and other healthcare workers that look after them. It will cover areas including:
- the goals they want to work towards, such as getting out of the house more, returning to work, or starting a hobby
- the support services they want, who is in charge of providing these services, what the support services have agreed to do and when they will do it
- emergency numbers, such as who they should contact if you become very unwell and your doctor's surgery is closed
- medicines
- an eating plan
- an exercise plan
Most patients would request for an action plan, therefore his/ her request would be granted as he/ she does have a long term- condition. The patients’ action plan would cover all of the things mentioned above.
PRIMARY CARE
Primary care is the type of care that occurs in the community, outside hospitals. Primary Care is the cares delivered by the people you normally see when you have first have a health problem. It usually involves the GP and other staff connected to the practice. Dentists, opticians and pharmacies also carry out primary care in the community. Services like these, provided in the community, are called primary care services. Health care centres are now offering many more services than doctors’ surgeries used to.
NHS works with local authorities and other agencies that provide health and social care locally to make sure that your local community's needs are being met.
A multi- agency community- based facility where teams of health professionals work together. They are often purpose- built. Teams consist of GPs, nurses, midwives, counsellors, community nurses, speech and occupational therapists and sometimes dentists.
SECONDARY CARE
This is the care carried out in a general hospital. Secondary care is known as acute healthcare and can be either elective care or emergency care. Elective care means planned specialist medical care or surgery, usually following referral from a primary or community health professional such as a GP.
TERTIARY CARE
These are specialist care establishments such as stroke rehabilitation clinics, spinal injury units and cancer care (oncology) units.
CARE STRATEGIES
Care strategies have to be reviewed on regular intervals to make sure that they are still in the best interests of the individual’s health. The patient’s medication has to be reviewed, as it may have reached a specified time limit, as in the case of some antibiotics.
Different type and kind of checks need to be carried out on the patient, to make sure that the medication is still effective and that side effects have not become unduly troublesome, this is the only way to know whether if he/ she will need new medication that may suit her/ him better.
The patient’s scans and x- rays will have to be repeated on several occasions to check on his/ her progress, or lack of progress, being made by the care strategy in place.
Therapies may no longer be required for him/ her, for instance occupational therapy, moreover others may possibly not be successful, such as radiotherapy, or conversely need to be added to the strategy.
The patient possibly will be referred back to the GP for monitoring, knowing that any change requiring specialist input will once again be referred.
Care strategies have to be reviewed to affect these types of changes to progress the patient’s health, avoid duplication as well as waste of resources plus make sure that the NHS is delivering the most cost- effective care to all patients.
care processes experienced by an individual with asthma.
A care pathway contains different elements together with planning, implementation, followed by on-going review. The pathways in industry would be called by other names, possibly a combination of good practice, quality control plus a large portion of on-going quality improvement and design modification. In healthcare a care pathway is viewed as a multi-disciplinary outline of anticipated care.
Every single patient will need a care pathway that is right for them, however every patient will want to know that they are moving swiftly through the right steps of making sure that accurate diagnosis are being made and appropriate treatments. Patients also want clear information about what is to happen at each step, and when. They also need support in making their about timing - possibly to take a little time to come to terms with what is happening to them and to consider options for treatment, or to plan treatment around an important family event. They want to be confident that services will be there as soon as they need them, as well as wanting the arrangements to be personalised around their own circumstances and particular clinical needs.
The purposes of care pathways are to progress the continuity as well as organization of care across different disciplines and sectors.
Care Pathways can be viewed as a set of rules.
Care pathways offer many benefits and these are:
Benefits
- Support the introduction of evidence-based medicine and use of clinical guidelines
- Support clinical effectiveness, risk management and clinical audit
- Improve multidisciplinary communication, teamwork and care planning
- Can support continuity and co-ordination of care across different clinical disciplines and sectors;
- Provide explicit and well-defined standards for care;
- Help reduce variations in patient care (by promoting standardisation);
- Help improve clinical outcomes;
- Help improve and even reduce patient documentation
- Support training;
- Optimise the management of resources;
- Can help ensure quality of care and provide a means of continuous quality improvement;
- Support the implementation of continuous clinical audit in clinical practice
- Support the use of guidelines in clinical practice;
- Help empower patients;
- Help manage clinical risk;
- Help improve communications between different care sectors;
- Disseminate accepted standards of care;
- Provide a baseline for future initiatives;
- Not prescriptive: don't override clinical judgement;
- Expected to help reduce risk;
- Expected to help reduce costs by shortening hospital stays
Patients will be provided with care by a large number of clinicians with varying levels of skills and experiences. He/ she will be provided with a uniform, safe level of care, according to evidence based guidelines is challenging given the levels of experience within each hospital.
The aim of his/ her treatment is to get their asthma under control and keep it that way. Everyone with asthma should be able to lead a full and unrestricted life. The treatments available for asthma are effective in most people and should enable you to be free from symptoms.
His/ Her doctor or nurse will adjust their asthma treatment to his/ her symptoms. Occasionally, the patient may well need to be on higher levels of medication than at other times.
The patient will be offered:
- Care at the GP surgery provided by doctors and nurses trained in asthma management
- Full information about his/ her condition and how to control it
- Involvement in making decisions about his/ her treatment
- Regular checks to ensure that his/ her asthma is under good control and he/ she is getting the right treatment (which should be at least once a year)
- A written personal asthma action plan agreed with your doctor or nurse.
The aim of care pathways.
- Provide best evidenced-based care
- Facilitate translation of national directives into local practice
- Improve multi-disciplinary and multi-agency communication
- Sustain and make equitable quality standards
- Reduce variance in practices
- Improve clinician/patient communication and satisfaction
- Identify research and development questions
- Involve team members in service development
CARE PLAN
A care plan is drawn up to detail; it lets health professionals know who is going to do what and when, together with the details of all agencies involved, such as telephone numbers.
Individuals with long-term conditions can have a care plan if request for one.
A care plan is an agreement between the patient and the health professional (and/or social services) to help them manage their health day-to-day.
Individuals with long-term conditions can take part in making their care plan. It supports to assess what care they need and how it will be provided to them.
The care plan is to help people, rather than help the GP and other healthcare workers that look after them. It will cover areas including:
- the goals they want to work towards, such as getting out of the house more, returning to work, or starting a hobby
- the support services they want, who is in charge of providing these services, what the support services have agreed to do and when they will do it
- emergency numbers, such as who they should contact if you become very unwell and your doctor's surgery is closed
- medicines
- an eating plan
- an exercise plan
Some patients may possibly not request for an action plan. He/ she might request for one in the future.
PRIMARY CARE
Primary care is the type of care that occurs in the community, outside hospitals. Primary Care is the cares delivered by the people you normally see when you have first have a health problem. It usually involves the GP and other staff connected to the practice. Dentists, opticians and pharmacies also carry out primary care in the community. Services like these, provided in the community, are called primary care services. Health care centres are now offering many more services than doctors’ surgeries used to.
NHS works with local authorities and other agencies that provide health and social care locally to make sure that your local community's needs are being met.
A multi- agency community- based facility where teams of health professionals work together. They are often purpose- built. Teams consist of GPs, nurses, midwives, counsellors, community nurses, speech and occupational therapists and sometimes dentists.
SECONDARY CARE
This is the care carried out in a general hospital. Secondary care is known as acute healthcare and can be either elective care or emergency care. Elective care means planned specialist medical care or surgery, usually following referral from a primary or community health professional such as a GP.
TERTIARY CARE
These are specialist care establishments such as stroke rehabilitation clinics, spinal injury units and cancer care (oncology) units.
CARE STRATEGIES
Care strategies have to be reviewed on regular intervals to make sure that they are still in the best interests of the individual’s health. The patients’ asthma medication has to be reviewed, as it may have reached a specified time limit, as in the case of some antibiotics.
Different kind of checks need to be carried out on him/ her, to make sure that the medication is still effective and that side effects have not become unduly troublesome, this is the only way to know whether if she will need new medication that may suit him/ her better.
His/ her scans and x- rays will have to be repeated on several occasions to check on his/ her progress, or lack of progress, being made by the care strategy in place.
He/ she may also be referred back to the GP for monitoring, knowing that any change requiring specialist input will once again be referred.
Care strategies have to be reviewed to affect these types of changes to progress the patient’s health, avoid duplication as well as waste of resources plus make sure that the NHS is delivering the most cost- effective care to all patients.