We are proud to announce that we have teamed up again with the award-winning GP updates provider, Red Whale. We have supported them in renewing their educational materials on identifying cancer in children and young people in general practice.
We are pleased they will again be using our signs and symptoms awareness card and teaching for clinicians as part of this work.
This resource has been sent free of charge to almost 44,000 GPs and health care professionals nationally and is free for all clinicians to download. Crucially it is a simple summary, written in line with current guidance to give clinicians the information they need to know now and then signposting to more detailed guidance.
Childhood cancer is the most common medical cause of death in children in the UK. One of the major things we can do to help change this is to work towards earlier diagnosis for these children. To do this, the education of health care professionals is crucial. When cancer is diagnosed at the earliest possible stage, it gives children the best possible chances of survival.
In the UK, the survival rates of children with cancer tend to lag behind their European counterparts. It is thought that one of the reasons for this is delays in diagnosis. Current training for doctors and other health professionals in the UK contains only sparse teaching on childhood cancer, something that urgently needs to change.
It has been a pleasure to be able to team up again with Red Whale to provide this vital resource for GPs and other health care professionals. Thank you to the team and Red Whale for your support in working with us. Childhood cancer is a diagnosis that no clinician wants to miss, yet it remains a diagnosis challenge because each GP surgery will only see one case of childhood cancer every 1.8 years on average. The information that medics need should be simple and easy to remember so they can be signposted to more in-depth guidance.
Dr Jen Kelly, GP, and CEO of the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust
The teaching material can be viewed here: https://www.redwhale.co.uk/pearls and more of our teaching materials for clinicians can be found on the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust website:
