Red Trouser Day, a volunteer Charity raising awareness and funds for bowel cancer research, is proudly supporting a major initiative entitled “Prevail”. The concept behind Prevail is discussed below and the Clinicians (a group of very senior medical professionals) are seeking input from GP’s by completing a simple questionnaire discussing some proposed ideas for change.
Please could we ask you to distribute to any GP you know or have a connection with; the Prevail team are looking for as much input as possible.
“In April this year, a group of Medical Professionals from hospitals around the UK, recognising the disruption that the Pandemic was causing in the lives and care of those diagnosed with cancer, set out to find a way to improve the realities which they and their colleagues are facing.
Working with patients, PREVAIL was developed, which will essentially change the way hospitals prioritise patients for their cancer treatment, based on their tumour type and risk. Although it was developed to improve services in the grip of COVID 19 the aim has been to create a pathway which makes life better for people presenting with cancer and in the process make the pathway easier for primary care to manage their patients’ expectations.
Hospitals will share the MDT notes with GPs immediately after the discussion so primary care are aware of the decisions being made, which will improve communication between primary and secondary care at a key point in the patient’s pathway and shorten the time and workload at no increase in cost/resources. A sample of the MDT proforma is available via a link in the Survey.
This could be quite a big change to the way things are done. It has been developed for colorectal cancer, but similar processes can be used for other tumour types, and so it would be good to get this right at the outset.
The PREVAIL Pathway is at a very important stage of its development and is currently being piloted in a number of hospitals. The project would very much benefit from your input at this stage, in the assessment of how much more this would improve the primary care aspect for your patients.
It would be great to get any thoughts and feedback on the process and the correspondence to patients. The following is a link to a short survey of 6 questions https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CancerMDTandPrimaryCareSurvey
We look forward to hearing your views, if you have any questions or concerns, please comment in the survey
Kind Regards
from the patient representatives of the PREVAIL team”
Red Trouser Day is a volunteer charity set up and run by Bowel Cancer Patients and close members of family who have been touched by this disease. We urgently need your funds to help improve patient outcomes and initiatives like PREVAIL. To support our cause and make a donation please go to https://redtrouserday.com/donate