Funded by CCLG and Young Lives vs Cancer
Lead investigator: Dr Jess Morgan, Leeds Children’s Hospital, and Dr Gemma Bryan, University of Surrey
Award: £104,631.12
Awarded October 2023
The challenge
Chemotherapy can involve staying in hospital, sometimes for days at a time. While there is a way to deliver ‘ambulatory’ chemotherapy (AC), which means using a portable pump that the patient or carer carries with them and visits the hospital daily, it is not commonly used for children and teenagers with cancer.
Research suggests that AC can improve quality of life, reduce pressure on hospitals, and reduce costs, without reducing safety or cure rates. However, we don’t currently understand which hospitals are providing ambulatory chemotherapy, or how they do it. For example, which patients are eligible, for which medicines, and how patients are monitored and supported.
The project
Dr Jess Morgan and Dr Gemma Bryan hope to provide a clear understanding of the national state of ambulatory care – looking at all of the Principal Treatment Centres across the UK (the specialist hospitals treating children with cancer).
They will conduct structured interviews with treatment centre leads, and select a range of hospitals to visit. These visits will form the basis of detailed case studies, where the team will investigate every part of the ambulatory care service.
The impact
The results of this project will provide a solid and evidenced foundation for hospitals to develop their ambulatory care provision on. The team will be working with patients and parents to produce reports and resources that are family-friendly, as well as working on papers and presentations at professional conferences. Dr Morgan and Dr Bryan hope that this work will support the excellent care and treatment of children and young people with cancer.