Oxford hospital’s cancer care ‘unsustainable’ due to staff shortages

A memo recently leaked to The Times has said that cancer patients are facing delays because nursing staff numbers were around 40 percent down.

Dr Weaver, the author of the memo, said that there were not enough nurses trained to administer chemotherapy treatment to patients, meaning a delay to treatment start times and that a solution may be to cut back on treatment from six cycles to four.

Dr Weaver added, “I know that many of us will find it difficult to accept these changes, but the bottom line is that the current situation with limited numbers of staff is unsustainable.”

However, a spokesman from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has said that they had met the standard waiting time of starting treatment within 31 days of a decision having been made, despite an increase in cancer patients.

He went on to say “We have not made any decisions to delay the start of chemotherapy treatment or to reduce the number of cycles of chemotherapy treatment which patients with cancer receive.

“The internal email from Dr Andrew Weaver sets out some of the challenges facing our chemotherapy service, with his ideas for how to tackle these issues, and invites constructive comments and alternative proposals from other cancer doctors and clinical staff.

“However, it does not represent a change to our formal policy for chemotherapy treatment.

“We would like to reassure our patients that no changes to chemotherapy treatment have been made or will be made before thorough consideration has been given to all possible options.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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