PRIME time!
Congratulations to our PRIME Prehabilitation Team who are celebrating their 1,000th referral since the service began in 2017.
The innovative service was set up as an Allied Health Professional (AHP)-led pilot in partnership with Macmillan, focusing on supporting patients having oesophageal, pancreatic, liver, ovarian, and bladder cancer surgery. The service was made substantive by the Trust in October 2019.
The multi-professional team includes physiotherapists, an occupational therapist, and a dietitian. Together they support patients to be physically fitter and better prepared for major oncology surgery, to improve their resilience and recovery.
The service also focuses on mental and emotional wellbeing, offering one-to-one support and education, covering a range of topics relevant to the challenges patients may experience when receiving cancer treatment prior to surgery.
Together they cover the PRIME principles of prehabilitation: Physical Activity, Resilience building, Improving wellbeing, Making healthy choices and Eating well.
To date, the team has displayed their outcomes at the World Prehab Conference in 2019 and has been selected as a case study for NHS benchmarking. The service was one of the first AHP-led prehabilitation services in the south region.