Chesterfield Group of GP Colleagues Show They Care About Every Cancer Screening Test and Patient!

A group of admin colleagues from Royal Primary Care (RPC) Derbyshire – a set of nine GP practices that are part of the Chesterfield Hospital NHS Foundation Trust group – are actively contacting patients to encourage them to attend their important cancer screenings.

RPC look after 47,000 patients and provide 250,000 appointments a year. Alongside these impressive statistics though, the Admin Team, know that every individual screening test counts and they have developed a novel way of tracking them, they have ‘screening jars’…

Vicki Kelly, leads the team at RPC and explained: “Every time we manage to get someone to attend their screening appointment and their results come back as abnormal then we know it is something that needs to be followed up and we mark this by adding a colourful bead to our Bowel, Breast or Cervical screening jars.”

From April 2023 to March 2024, the team spoke to 1,272 cervical screening patients about missing their smear. Of the patients they contacted 22% went on to have the test with 85% of those results coming back as normal with no follow up needed. Any abnormal results that were picked up meant patients could be referred for quicker follow up or treatment.

Vicki added: “These are the numbers that we celebrate! They are people who, for one reason or another, are reluctant to come forward for their screening. We try and speak to them to provide some reassurance and even give them a chance to meet with one of our nursing team to talk through the process and put them at ease.

“We know that it is especially important for patients to attend their screening appointments. The earlier abnormal results are found and investigated, the better the potential treatment and outcomes – so it makes us happy to know that we play such an active role in supporting people to take positive action for their own health, and future.”

To encourage patients to do their bowel screening, the team send a bespoke card to each patient on their 60th birthday, wishing them a happy birthday and also letting them know that they should look out for their faecal immunochemical test (FIT) coming through the post. They also then send reminder letters to anyone who doesn’t respond to the screening invitation within a set amount of time.

Vicki added: “We also reach out to people who haven’t responded about their breast screening too. We know that the sooner people are seen the better, so we contact our patients to try and raise awareness and help people feel empowered to take control of their own health.”

Nathaniel Webber, General Manager of RPC said: “Our patients are at the heart of everything we do. They are the reason we are always trying to improve our services to support their health needs and to give them better outcomes. It gives me great pride to see the care that the Admin team put into raising awareness of screening and how dedicated they are to saving lives. Every life is important to us and if you are an RPC patient then we are here for you and we will continue to try and help you overcome any fear, or life challenges, that prevent you from putting your own health first and accessing these important programmes. We want to do everything we can to help improve health outcomes and ultimately to save lives!”