Stavroula Chante

Lead Chemotherapy Nurse, Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley

My role as the Lead Chemotherapy Nurse is crucial within the Cancer Management Team. I am responsible for improving the outcomes and experiences of people currently undertaking chemotherapy, including patients on clinical trials. My role is also to develop the education of the cancer nursing workforce, provide strong leadership and implement changes across the cancer services within the organisation.

Within my role, I also try to promote cancer awareness and provide training for healthcare professionals, students, patients and the public. I aim to work both strategically and operationally to ensure that the impact of cancer education is recognised as key to quality patient care. I have also been involved in education as lecturer and module leader at Oxford Brookes University. I teach on haemato-oncology nursing, chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, to post-graduate nurses who wish to acquire the qualification of chemotherapy administration.

Our department is an outpatient chemotherapy day unit offering, aside from chemotherapy administration, new patient chemotherapy chat clinics, chemotherapy toxicity review and management, as well as holistic needs assessments and haemato-oncology triaging.

A massive and complex organisation like the NHS requires top-class leadership and management to be able to deliver the transformational improvements on which the health care system of the future depends. This requires leaders who cultivate a strong culture of engagement for patients and staff and who deploy a range of leadership styles and behaviours.

Undertaking the Inspire Improvement Fellowship Programme will help me learn and apply methods that will result in advocating culture changes with a strong emphasis on embedding learning, quality improvement and patient-centred care.

For more information, contact [email protected]