A crucial new education and training tool for nurses administering and handling systemic anti-cancer therapies has been launched, to standardise training and practice, and enable nurses to transfer their competency across NHS trusts if they moved jobs.
The Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) Passport for children and young people cancer services has been introduced to improve consistency and ensure comparable standards across the UK.
The Passport provides a national standardisation of education and assessment for the fundamental skills and knowledge required to safely handle and administer SACT and is designed for practitioners handling and administering SACT and treating children and young people within principal treatment centres (PTCs), paediatric oncology shared care units (POSCUs) and community services.
The work is the result of a collaboration between Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG)’s Children and Young People Oncology Nurse Educators (CYPONE) working group and the United Kingdom Oncology Nursing Society (UKONS), who produced the first SACT Passport for adult cancer services in 2017.
A working party from the CYPONE group partnered with UKONS to adapt the adult passport to reflect the types of SACT agents used for treating children and SACT practice in children’s cancer services across the UK.
Draft versions of the document were then piloted around PTCs and POSCUs to receive feedback from experts in the field, and the Passport will continue to be subject to scheduled reviews and updated in line with user feedback and the progress of children’s cancer treatments.
A key feature of this new, nationally agreed workbook is that it allows nurses who move hospitals to transfer their training records. Previously, each hospital had its own training workbook to ensure its own standards were met, meaning that each time they moved, a nurse would have to re-do their SACT training.
Nadia Freri, a Paediatric and TYA Clinical Educator at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and member of the working party that developed the Passport, believes the nationally agreed workbook will transform the way nurses are trained to administer SACT in the United Kingdom.
She said:
Patients, parents, the public, employers and individual nurses need to feel confident in the training programme and assessment pathway for nurses giving toxic therapies to children.
This SACT Passport is evidence-based and tested, offering a consistent approach to training and assessment across the UK.
Hospital Trusts can now utilise the SACT Passport for children’s cancer services with the confidence that it has been through robust content development and UK-wide testing in practice.
Nurses will have confidence in their training, and not have to waste time and effort repeating training programmes if they move hospitals, which, in turn, will save time and maximising available skills resources for SACT administration.
Families should be confident in nurses having access to consistent and evidence-based training, meeting nationally agreed competencies.
Nadia Freri
The idea of a paediatric SACT Passport was conceived by Louise Ollett, Chair of CCLG’s CYPONE group, having seen the adult version in use in clinical practice.
Louise, who led the working party for four years, spoke of her pride at seeing the project come to fruition and explained that the workbook has already shown its value during the pilot testing.
She said:
It feels fantastic to have this completed Passport for PTCs, POSCUs and community services to use within paediatric oncology clinical practice.
Nursing staff are now able to use this document as evidence of completion of SACT theoretical training.
In the pilot phase in 2019, a paediatric nurse moved from Leeds to Newcastle. The nurse was able to provide her SACT Passport as evidence of theoretical knowledge with regards to SACT administration.
Having this standardised approach reduced time in terms of attendance to further study days as her theoretical learning was achieved.
Louise
Jeanette Hawkins, CCLG Chief Nurse, added:
CCLG and our members are the experts in childhood cancer.
In recent years we have successfully developed, launched and implemented a number of large-scale projects to support nursing workforce development and enhance quality, consistency and standards of care, using collaborative approaches.
The SACT Passport adds another resource to that growing portfolio.
Jeanette Hawkins
To help services implement the SACT Passport locally, Louise will be offering ‘Train the Trainer’ sessions in February and March 2023. Booking for these sessions will open shortly and will be available on CCLG’s Meetings and Events page.