When we donate our funds we ask the doctors in the children's hospitals,

"What will help the kids in their care the most "

We are proud to have funded the positions below.

The Oncology unit at Westmead, provides advanced training for young paediatricians in the field of childhood cancer treatment and research, by way of an externally funded Oncology Fellowship for 12 months, extendable to 24 months by negotiation. This is an invaluable source of training for the Fellow as it exposes the Fellow to a broad spectrum of childhood cancers and their management under the supervision of the departments consultants and provides excellent opportunities for the Oncology Fellow to develop his or her competency as a young specialist.

The Oncology Fellow supervises three medical house staff and is responsible for the day to day medical care of all the departments in-patients, and assists in the day to day management of the out-patients in the Oncology Treatment Centre, involving close liaison with medical house staff, nursing staff and especially families. 

Oncology is a very specialised area and without this position, the patients would be looked after by hospital registrars who rotate departments every 3 months.

Having an Oncology Fellow means that patients receive a greater standard of care and expertise through:

(1) Continuity of Care - the Oncology Fellow gets to know the patients and their families, building trust with them because the child is cared for by the same doctor throughout the course of their treatment and

(2) The Oncology Fellow passes on their knowledge to junior medical staff and oncology nursing staff and is involved in clinical research. 

The Oncology Fellow is indispensable in the care of  children with cancer. BACK

Rhonda Rytmeister
The Oncology Unit at Westmead, uses donated funds to employ a     full-time psychologist in the department who is an invaluable member of our allied health support team.   The Oncology psychologist is freely available to all patients and their families should they need to talk to someone. The psychologist treats the 'family' as a unit and not just the individual child. The role of the Psychologist is varied and includes the following:
•	Provides counselling and support to children and families who have been newly diagnosed with cancer. Helps them deal with stress management and anxiety.  Families can be particularly under strain if one of the parents needs to give up their job to care for the sick child.
•	Provides therapy for parents to deal with anxiety and depression.
•	Helps parents with behavioural management of their child and children with pain management.
•	Uses CBT (cognitive behaviour therapies) to help children cope with painful procedures, (eg teaches them to push the thought of pain to the back of their mind and train them to focus on being healthy again in the future).
•	Liases with schools and helps facilitate the child's entry back into a normal school life.
•	Provides home visits to grieving families (bereavement support)
•	Conducts neuro-psychological assessments
•	Runs weekly discussion groups for parents this is a place where they can talk freely and gain support from each other
•	Helps children (especially teenagers) cope with feeling 'left out' of normal social life
•	Helps facilitate communication between child and parent (eg often a child will know that they are dying, yet the parents don't know the child knows)
•	Aids communication between parent and doctor
•	Helps kids and families who are coming off treatment (often parents think they are meant to be happy as their child is finishing treatment yet they often have fear and anxiety that the cancer will come back)
•	Explores spiritual issues with the families. Often the families start to think about deeper issues (is there a higher purpose for this, am I being punished etc) and often turn to the psychologist just to explore these thoughts
The Psychologist is indispensable in the support that is provided to patients and their families. BACK

Advances in design of medical equipment and surgical techniques now permit almost all children receiving treatment for cancer to have a permanent and comfortable in- dwelling tube inserted into the blood- stream known as a central venous line (CVL)  The availability of the CVL means that blood tests, required often on a daily basis for blood counts and other essential monitoring during treatment, can be collected painlessly by sampling the CVL rather than by painful finger pricks or venipunctures.

This position is fully supported by Westmead's, Haematology and Pathology departments.  A registered nurse is available each weekday morning to access the CVLs of all Oncology patients requiring blood tests for their routine treatment, removing the need for hundreds of painful finger pricks each week.

By providing telephone liaison and treatment planning with families each afternoon, the CVL nurse is also a valuable component of the Oncology Unit's participation in clinical trials supervised by the prestigious U.S.-based Clinical Oncology Group, comprising hundreds of similar oncology units through the United States and other countries. The Oncology Unit at Westmead has been a member of C.O.G. since 2000.  Participation in C.O.G. ensures our patients have access to the most up-to-date and reliable treatments for childhood cancer.

Each morning, the CVL/COG Nurse draws blood via central lines from 20-30 outpatients  in the Haematology Department.

In the afternoons the CVL/COG Nurse  conducts essential case management and liaison with families for oncology children enrolled on Clinical Oncology Group trials to help ensure compliance with protocols/treatment programs.

The benefits to the children is painless blood collection, in contrast to the countless finger-pricks they currently endure, as well as advances in treatments obtained through Clinical Oncology Group trials. BACK

Most of the remarkable advances in the improved cure rate for childhood cancer have occurred because of the advent of multi-centre, and now international, clinical trials of treatment. This allows the current most effective therapy for a particular childhood cancer to be compared to a slightly different experimental therapy which may prove even more effective. Successful participation in such trials requires assiduous recording of data, and reporting of that data to the national or international centres that are supervising each treatment trial.

Many of our patients are entered on national or international trials of therapy, to enable outcomes of treatment to be compared and continuously improved.

The treatment of childhood cancer is complex, and requires administration of complicated regimes of cancer-fighting drugs known as chemotherapy for periods of up to two years. As many as nine different drugs may be involved. In order for the treatment to have the best chance of succeeding, it must be administered accurately, and the results recorded in department records for later analysis.

The Oncology Unit currently employs three full-time Clinical Research Associates to provide the required data management. One of these staff members is paid for by government funds allocated to the hospital's budget. The salary for the other two positions are met by donated funds, BACK

Most routine treatment of childhood cancer is administered on an outpatient basis (no overnight stay). This means Westmead’s young patients can return home and get back to school soon after treatment is started. It also means that children spend less time in hospital and this helps improve the morale of both patient and family.

Treatment however,  often requires two to three visits to the department each week for tests and injections of planned treatment. This makes the Oncology Treatment Centre one of the busiest areas in the entire hospital as between 20-30 patients arrive at the Oncology Treatment Centre each weekday for routine treatment.

The oncology unit uses donated funds to employ additional medical practitioners to work in the Oncology Treatment Centre. They provide essential hands-on care to children requiring treatment (for example venipunctures, lumbar punctures, chemotherapy injections). They also assess the patients to ensure they are well enough to receive the next planned part of treatment. They make a significant contribution to reducing unpleasant waiting times and helping our patients get on their way home quickly again. They also become very well known and trusted by the patients and their families and form an invaluable component of our support program. BACK

Shannon Tracey, position 1

Melanie Boulton, position 2

The Department of Social Work requested and received funding, for two new social work positions in the oncology unit.  The additional positions were required to address the growing need for support services for families with children with cancer.  These positions are providing crisis support to parents and children at the time of diagnosis or relapse in the child's condition and extend services to siblings and other family members.  BACK

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