Education: making acute oncology everyone's business

Cancer nurses are working with their multidisciplinary colleagues to lead the way to ensure that all staff who interact with people with cancer have acute oncology (AO) knowledge and skills. Together with the UK Acute Oncology Society and Macmillan Cancer Support, the UK Oncology Nursing Society's (UKONS) role has been pivotal in increasing AO education, training and assessment to further the knowledge and skills of staff working across the UK. The overall aim is to ensure that health services optimise safe outcomes for patients with cancer.

The UKONS Acute Oncology Knowledge and Skills Guidance (2018) was developed through widespread consultation across the UK and provided a framework of standardised, multidisciplinary AO competence for four levels of practice:

Between 2019 and 2021, UKONS and Macmillan Cancer Support developed an AO online education pathway aligned to the four levels of practice (UKONS, 2018; 2024a). The free acute oncology online learning (Macmillan Cancer Support and UKONS, 2024) was updated this year and now includes knowledge checks, so that completion of this course constitutes achievement of the Level 1 Acute Oncology Competence Passport.