After a career in fundraising and marketing, taking in some of the major charities in the cancer arena, Claire Rowney is CEO of Breast Cancer Now. In this first episode of Series 3 of CANCERTALK, Penny and Robin question Claire about the strategic direction of Breast Cancer Now in terms of the development of person-centred care, about the role of Lifestyle Medicine in that, and about the steps she envisions will take us closer to the level of care she feels should be available to everyone affected by breast cancer.

Lucy Patullo is one of many who have used their own experience of cancer to transform their lives, choosing to work directly to support others facing a diagnosis of cancer, and retraining to bring the resources of integrative medicine that provided them with so much help to many more people. Lucy is outspoken and passionate about the importance of providing support that extends well beyond the physical treatment of cancer, lifestyle approaches that she is confident can both radically improve the experience of treatment and save unnecessary treatment costs.

Dr James Wilson has a deep connection to his work founded in his early personal experience of cancer and cancer care in his own family. These experiences have left him with a clear picture of what patients need from their specialist, particularly in terms of listening to their hopes and needs, and communicating with them at such a critical point in their lives.

Maria Vega is a Senior Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist with more than a decade of experience across the NHS and private healthcare. She is also trained in medical and auricular acupuncture with a focus on oncology and palliative care, and is a Cancer Exercise Specialist and Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery facilitator. Maria is passionate about the need for far broader support for those going through cancer and works to achieve this for her patients. But beyond this she’d like to see Oncology Nurses across the country empowered to deliver or signpost Integrative Oncology modalities.

Prof Rob Newton is a world leader in pioneering Exercise Oncology, destroying previous misconceptions about the need for rest in the face of physically challenging treatments like radiotherapy or chemotherapy, or when faced with common symptoms such as fatigue, low mood or the inability to sleep, with rigorous trial data demonstrating significant improvements in quality of life and substantial cost savings. More recently, the science is demonstrating that exercise really is great medicine for cancer, worthy of equal consideration alongside the best treatments that modern medicine has offer as a means of extending lives.

It’s no secret that GPs in the UK are working under extreme pressure and with little job satisfaction. The ludicrously short consultation times create a conveyor belt of ‘cases’ with no opportunity to build relationships or trust, elements that are fundamental to the healing interchange between practitioner and patient. They know that despite doing their very best, they are merely applying sticking plasters to the complex, deep-seated problems that many of their patients face. This situation prompted Dr Katy Stephen to broaden her training and adopt situations in which she is able to spend more time and give her best advice – which doesn’t concern any complex medical interventions, but gets back to the ‘basics’ of health.

The episode takes in a broad discussion of the rise in complex chronic health conditions, including cancer, and of the potential for a greater role for GPs in cancer care.

Dr Dominique Lee has set out to bring change to the working environment of doctors and other healthcare workers. Raw personal experience provides her with the impetus for this initiative, and she is certain that until healthcare has a more caring and respectful culture, abuse and poor practice will prevail, good practitioners will continue to leave, and patients will continue receiving care that falls well short of their needs.

The culture of men in the UK is such that they are very unlikely to pursue any kind of supportive therapies. When it comes to healthcare, the stiff upper lip persists. However, a recommendation and delivery of auricular acupuncture for a range of unpleasant symptoms, when given by Philip Reynolds Consultant Therapeutic Radiographer to men with prostate cancer, results in a surprisingly high take up.

In recognition of the need for fundamental changes to our NHS, the government has launched Change NHS as a means to garner input from both the public and other organisations. For this episode we hear from two people with a lot to say about cancer care in the NHS: firstly Chris Lewis, outspoken patient advocate and founder of SIMPal, a charity set up to tackle cancer poverty, and secondly Versha Carter, currently receiving cancer treatment, but also the force behind the hugely successful Integrative & Personalised Medicine Congress, someone with a broad perspective on her own cancer care options.

Dr Sarah Partridge is a Clinical Oncologist specialising in head and neck cancers. She also has an abiding interest in mind-body therapies which has led her to train in Clinical Hypnosis. She finds this therapy to be an enormous resource as an alternative or adjunct to conventional methods of managing pain, stress, phobic reactions and more. She has already demonstrated its capacity to save healthcare costs in meaningful ways, and with her clinical experience backed up by all the evidence for its efficacy, Dr Partridge is in no doubt that Clinical Hypnosis has an important role to play in oncology.