Aim: Patient’s with rare cancers often require multiple referrals to a number of specialist nursing and allied health support roles. The development and implementation of the Patient Self reporting Health History (PSRHH) at Redcliffe Hospital has enabled Cancer Care Coordinators to create appropriate referrals to Allied Health services in a timely and seamless fashion.

Methodology: 

The role of the Cancer Care Coordinator (CCC) is seen as pivotal to the success of delivery of cancer services for people affected by cancer. When a diagnosis of a cancer is made it is often hard to identify individuals distress in a way that helps the cancer team determine what patient’s or their significant others needs are.

The PSRHH is a tool that consists of a number of validated screening tools which aids the Cancer Care Coordinators to identify the most appropriate Health Care professional to address needs in a timely and seamless fashion at the time of diagnosis, during treatment and at follow up. The PSRHH was evaluated to determine the effectiveness of the screening process and screening tools.

Results: Implementation of audits of the PSRHH has identified the percentage of patient’s completing PSRHH and the associated referrals generated by the CCC. The evaluation determined that the PSRHH is an effective tool, however, audit also identified the need to modify further the content of the PSRHH.

Conclusions: The PSRHH has proven to be an effective tool to facilitate the appropriate referral to specialist nursing and allied health support roles. PSRHH enables a focus for benchmarking, evaluating and improving patient care identifying with Clinical Care Standards according to Australian Commission on Safety & Quality in health care National Standards and Optimal Cancer pathways.