Interaction with chemotherapy shows why Cancer Care campaign must succeed | United Kingdom

Have you ever wanted to ask someone a question but bottled it up at the last second?

Sometimes it can be hard to get through, like getting down on one knee to propose and then having to pretend to tie your shoelaces, even though you’re on vacation and wearing sandals on the beach.

Other times, a simple “never mind, it doesn’t matter” is enough, leaving the other person confused as to what it was all about.

Part of me wonders if this is what is happening in the UK’s NHS hospitals.

The last time I was preparing to undergo chemotherapy, the nurse caring for me asked me the usual questions about the side effects of my treatment.

She asked me if I was eating well and I joked about Hula Hoops.

She asked me if I had fallen in the last two weeks and I tried to remember if I had.

She asked me about diarrhea and I had to forget that I was around other people on treatment so I could tell her that I had to predict when it would happen, without feeling too embarrassed.

Then, when she asked me about nausea and vomiting, I had to decide if it was worth talking about illnesses that probably weren’t related to my treatment.

Above all, I’m sure I spotted a question on his computer screen that included the words psychology and mental health.

(This means that, hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for NHS IT specialists to add a better mental health question to the hospital systems used to treat patients.)

I can’t tell you what the question was because I wasn’t asked it. Instead, the nurse simply clicked on the “yes” option, with the other choice available to her being “no.”

Did the nurse want to ask this question but was afraid of what I would say or how best to answer it?

I understand that it’s difficult to talk about mental health issues, especially in a room full of strangers who are all going through harsh chemotherapy treatments and doing their best to survive.

Nurses on treatment units spend a lot of time getting to know their patients and, in many circumstances, are therefore the ones who detect when a person’s mental health has deteriorated.

But at the Daily Express we don’t think it’s fair that the responsibility for detecting mental health problems falls on their shoulders.

Instead, as part of the Cancer Care campaign, we ask a cancer patient’s medical team to ask patients how they are feeling emotionally and mentally, as part of the consultation they have before each treatment cycle. We also call for a holistic needs assessment taking into account mental health to be carried out for every NHS patient diagnosed with cancer.

Whether this is done in an in-person meeting or over the phone is not as important as the results once the questions are answered.

If a patient is experiencing emotional difficulties, they should be referred to someone who can help them deal with this aspect of treatment, whether it is a counselor, psychologist, or even just a a support group full of like-minded people. who faced the same problems.

This will be especially helpful when patients are struggling with anxiety-inducing stages of treatment, like waiting for test results, and other times like trying to deal with the guilt of missing their child’s “big” birthday. best friend because they felt too ill to leave their home.

Any cancer hospital directors reading this should lead the way in asking their medical teams to ask questions about mental health, because doing so will help improve the lives of their patients.

And the Department of Health and the NHS must work to make this change happen in every cancer unit across the country.