| Post | Role
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| Specialist cancer and palliative care nurses
| Specialist cancer nurses play a crucial role in improving health outcomes and the patient experience, coordinating care and providing psychosocial support and patient-centred care for cancer patients. They improve outcomes by delivering high quality and effective symptom/pain control and enabling greater choice in end-of-life care.
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| Information posts | Macmillan information professionals play a vital role in supporting patient choice, facilitating self-management of symptoms, improving the patient experience, and helping patients to access health and social care services.
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User involvement
posts | User involvement facilitators enable people affected by cancer to directly influence the design and delivery of cancer services. Cancer partnership groups have brought about improvements in information, communication of bad news, transportation, parking, waiting times and the design of new buildings.
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| GP facilitators | GP facilitators improve cancer care within the primary care sector. GPs have a vital role to play in the early detection of cancer, co-ordination of cancer care and palliative care.
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Psychological
support services | The NICE supportive and palliative care guidance recommends that specialist psychological support is available for patients with the most severe needs. We have developed specialist services where no service existed before, eg the Pan-Birmingham cancer network had no specialist service for a population of over one million people.
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Allied health
professionals | Allied health professionals (AHPs), such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians and specialist radiographers, contribute significantly to the support for patients in both specialist palliative care and in treatment plans by making sure that all aspects of care are supported and enabling patients to exercise control over their treatment and disease.
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| Social care posts | Macmillan social care posts/services, which include social workers, carer schemes and benefit advisers, meet the practical and psychosocial needs of people affected by cancer and, as such, are crucial to the implementation of the NICE Supportive and Palliative Care Guidance.
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