The latest news from the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (NBOCC) for April 2009.
Indigenous early detection and breast awareness initiative
NBOCC is working in collaboration with Indigenous leaders, communities and networks to promote the importance of early detection in surviving breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in Indigenous women and the second leading cause of cancer death. While breast cancer survival has improved markedly in Australia in recent years, Indigenous women continue to experience nine per cent higher rates of breast cancer mortality than the Australian female population as a whole. NBOCC is committed to ‘closing the gap’ in breast cancer outcomes for Indigenous women and reducing lives lost to the disease. Ensuring breast cancer is detected as early as possible in Indigenous women is key to achieving this objective.
NBOCC’s Indigenous early detection initiative aims to provide Indigenous women with information about breast changes and mammographic screening, encouraging them to be proactive about breast health.
As part of this initiative, NBOCC is running two Well Women Workshops to provide Indigenous women with important information every woman should know about breast cancer. The workshops will be held in Cairns (1 May) and Yarrabah (2 June), in partnership with the Wuchopperan and Yarrabah Health Services. The workshops will bring together Indigenous well women, Indigenous breast cancer survivors and local health workers to share stories of strength and survival and start talking about breast awareness, symptoms to look out for and mammographic screening.
Early detection messages will also be delivered through interactive, touch-screen health promotion kiosks (‘HITnet kiosks’) in Indigenous communities across Australia.
For more information on the Indigenous early detection initiative, please contact Emma Hanks (02 9357 9408).
Cairns Well Women Workshop
When: 1 May 2009, 11.30am-3.30pm
Where: Rainforest Meeting Room, Wuchopperen Health Service
13 Moignard Street, Manoora
New model of communication skills training: teaching on the run
NBOCC is partnering with researchers at the University of Western Australia to trial a new model of delivering communication skills training: Teaching on the Run: Improving Communication Skills with Cancer Patients. The new model has been developed to encourage senior or supervising oncology clinicians to incorporate the principles of effective communication skills into the real-time clinical training of junior health professionals. The program will incorporate two existing NBOCC communication skills training modules – Breaking bad news and Eliciting and responding to emotional cues.
Program Developers, Professor Fiona Lake and Dr Margaret Potter will facilitate the first three workshops (venue to be confirmed), scheduled for:
Perth (20 May) 1.00-5.00pm
Sydney (10 June) 1.00-5.00pm
Brisbane (11 June) 1.00-5.00pm
To register for a Teaching on the Run workshop, contact Katie Rampling (02 9357 9409).
For more information about NBOCC’s Communication skills training initiative, please contact Heidi Wilcoxon (02 9357 9411).
MRI Medicare rebate update
The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing has made a minor amendment to its item descriptor for Medicare item 63464. The updated item descriptor clarifies that the new Medicare rebate for use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in the surveillance and diagnosis of women under 50 years of age at high risk of developing breast cancer applies to asymptomatic women. A breast MRI questions and answers document is also now available on the Department of Health and Ageing website.
Have your say on the future of post-surgical care
NBOCC is conducting a project on the post-surgical care of women who have had surgery for early breast cancer. As part of this project, NBOCC is inviting nurses who care for women with breast cancer after surgery and in the month after discharge from hospital to complete a survey looking at information and support services delivered by nurses in the post-surgical care period. The project aims to identify successful components of current models of post-surgical care.
NBOCC would like to hear the views of a range of nurses, including specialist breast care nurses, oncology nurses, community nurses, ward and surgical nurses to inform recommendations for improvements to the delivery of care.
The survey will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Please follow the link to complete the survey online: https://www.surveymonkey.com/nbocc3.
For further information on the survey, please contact Phillipa Hastings (02 9357 9412).