NHS cancer specialists ‘too busy manning the phones to see patients’

CANCER specialists who have been trained to eradicate tumours with radiotherapy are being instead told to man the phones.

An in- depth report into NHS staffing has uncovered how ‘highly qualified’ radiographers are being put in charge of reception desks.

It also found that 43 per cent of doctors, nurses and other specialists did not have enough time to talk to or comfort cancer patients.

Cancer Research UK, which carried out the report, predicted that the NHS’s cancer services would ‘slip down the ranks’ if staffing levels did not improve. Around half of us will develop cancer at some point and there are around 360,000 new cases in the UK each year.

This is predicted to increase to 422,000 a year by 2022 due to an ageing population and cancers caused by obesity, smoking and alcohol.

Experts say the NHS cannot cope with these numbers.

Only last week the health watchdog launched a major review over concerns that cancer cases were being missed due to a lack of staff. The Care Quality Commission found that three lung cancer patients had suffered ‘significant harm’ at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. The watchdog said that junior doctors had been left to interpret X-rays due to a lack of radiologists, who are specially trained to read scans.

This latest report is based on a survey of 2,544 NHS cancer specialists including doctors, nurses, researchers and staff who interpret scans and X-rays.

Some 43 per cent of the specialists who took part said they did not spend enough time with patients to provide ‘excellent’ care. Experts from Cancer Research UK also visited the cancer units of 11 teaching hospitals to interview staff. In several they found ‘therapeutic radiographers’, who help guide radiotherapy treatment, were manning reception desks.

The report stated: ‘During our site visits many health professionals highlighted the problems with lack of administrative staff. In some instances, therapeutic radiographers had been asked to man the reception.’

Another 73 per cent of specialists said their hospital was too short-staffed to provide ‘excel- lent’ and ‘efficient’ cancer care. Many were also too busy to carry out research and develop cures.

Emma Greenwood, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘If staff don’t have time to do research our world- class health system will start to slip down the ranks.’

The report also predicted a shortage of cancer doctors by 2022 as many retire early.

The NHS will hire an extra 500 cancer specialists by 2020, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said. The experts in reading scans and X-rays will help diagnose patients more quickly and improve survival rates.

‘Slip down the ranks’