Cancer care FAQs

The NHS aims to assess, diagnose and treat cancer as quickly as possible. Find out more about the referrals, standards and targets that help them do this.

Your GP has arranged an urgent referral so that your symptoms can be investigated to find out what is causing your symptoms and whether or not it could be cancer. There are a few pathways that you may follow.

• You may receive a phone call from a faster diagnosis clinical nurse specialist who will introduce themselves and ask you some questions about your symptoms and medical history. They will then advise you on what should happen next.
• Your GP may refer you ‘straight to a test’ or you may be invited to attend a one stop clinic.

A one stop clinic aims to provide patients with an initial consultation, diagnosis and treatment plan within one visit to a clinic. They are aimed at diagnosing and creating a treatment plan for one specific condition such as one stop breast clinic and one stop gynae clinic.

If you don’t hear from the hospital with 5 working days of seeing your GP please call your GP surgery and check the referral has been sent to Kingston Hospital.

After you have had your initial investigation, you may be asked to have more investigations as part of the faster diagnosis pathway. This may include further scans and obtaining tissue which will be looked at closely under a microscope.

Your initial investigations will be discussed with a consultant, and we will communicate these results to you, face to face or via telephone. You may be asked to have some further investigations.

For a small number of people, the test results show a suspected cancer. If this happens, your case will be discussed in a multi-disciplinary team meeting, which takes place weekly. Following this you will be contacted by a team member who will discuss what will happen next.

Yes. At this appointment, your treatment pathway with be discussed with you.  You will be allocated a cancer clinical nurse specialist who will be your main point of contact. They will give you information about your diagnosis and treatment and contact details.

Practical tips for talking with healthcare staff can be found on Macmillan pages and include:

• Be honest and factual when describing problems
• Do not say that your symptoms are better than they are.
• Talk about how you feel, including feelings of anxiety or depression. Even if your healthcare team cannot help you, they should refer you to someone who can help
• Use your own language
• Ask for simpler explanations
• Say if you are embarrassed
• Make sure you understand by repeating things back to the doctor
• We can arrange an interpreter if needed, please ask your team
• Remember, you will have other chances to ask questions.

Your hospital department will let you know if this is possible.  If this is not possible, a relative or friend can join you over the phone or via video on your phone. The nurse or doctor should ask you if you want this. But if they don’t, please do ask for it. Many people find it very helpful to have someone else to help ask questions or write down what is being discussed.

Treatments for cancer include surgery, systemic therapy and radiotherapy.

If surgery is a treatment option you will have your surgery at Kingston Hospital or at St George’s Hospital in Tooting. Follow-up will then be at Kingston Hospital.

Radiotherapy takes place at Royal Marsden Hospital under the care of a clinical oncologist. Each treatment of radiotherapy is known as a “fraction of radiotherapy”. The amount of fractions will vary depending on the type of cancer and treatment regime. The Royal Marsden will discuss this with you and a planning CT scan will be performed before radiotherapy starts.

Systemic therapy is given at Kingston Hospital in the Sir William Rous Unit under the management of a medical oncologist from the Royal Marsden Hospital. Systemic treatment may be chemotherapy, tablet therapy, immunotherapy or a combination of these treatments. They are administered intravenously or orally.

You may have one treatment, or all three treatments at different times of your pathway. Your clinical nurse specialist will be your contact to guide and support you through these treatments.

In the first instance please speak to your cancer Clinical Nurse Specialist. You can also ask to speak to your GP.

If you are living with cancer, you may be able to get help with health costs, including financial support for things like prescriptions, wigs, and dental treatment.

The Macmillan Benefits Advice Service works in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support and Citizens Advice Croydon to support people affected by cancer.

The team can help you understand what support is available to help you pay the bills or meet extra expenses.

To find out more, you can:

• Speak to your cancer specialist nurse
• Visit the Macmillan cancer information centre
• Contact the Macmillan service by calling 0207 042 0332*. Our helpline is open Monday to Friday, 9.30AM to 5PM (excluding public holidays). If the line is busy or closed when you call, you can leave a message and we’ll call you back. *Calls charged at the 01/02 rate.

Please see below links to resources and support:

• Coping with cancer and emotions (Macmillan)
• Getting help with emotions (Macmillan)
• Emotional effects of cancer (Macmillan)
• Kingston Hospital’s Cancer Counselling Service
• Macmillan stories and media booklets

Please tell us what you think by completing the Friends and Family test.

You can also contact our patient advice service (PALS) to give us a compliment, raise a concern, or make a complaint here.

Please visit our dedicated caring for someone who has cancer page for cancer carers for more information. There is also information available on the Macmillan website about the emotional effects of caring.

Yes. When patients have completed active cancer treatment or have cared for someone who was treated for cancer at least one year ago, they are welcome to join our cancer patient partners group.

When a person is diagnosed with cancer in the UK, information about them is automatically included in their national cancer registry.

It is data from cancer registries that tells us how many people are diagnosed with cancer, what treatments they have, how long they live, and whether this is getting better or worse. This information can then be used to help plan cancer services and identify where further progress is needed in order to improve the lives of all people affected by cancer.

Some cancer treatments can affect your fertility. Whether you are starting cancer treatment or finished some time ago, you can find out more on the Macmillan fertility and cancer web page.