Publish date: 14 March 2024
Friday 15 March 2024 marks the third annual Cancer Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) day, highlighting the role of cancer CNSs in cancer treatment.
A CNS supports patients across all stages of their treatment, ensuring they have the right advice and information about their diagnosis and treatment.
CNSs will often be the central point of contact for someone going through cancer treatment and are often on hand to give practical and emotional support.
To celebrate the 2024 awareness day, we are profiling the role of our Rapid Diagnostic Centre Cancer CNS, Dawn Turner.
Dawn tells us more about her journey from joining the RAF in 2003 to becoming an associate CNS in 2019 and then entering her current role in 2021.
Tell us a bit about your career
I joined the RAF in 2003 to start my basic training and got posted to the University of Central England (now Birmingham City University) after passing out to start the same three year student nurse training as our NHS colleagues but in a very impractical white dress and shoes!
We had the same access to NHS placements as the rest but during the long summer breaks, we were asked to find a suitable military placement so would spend long weeks in military medical centres seeing to many primary care duties as well as the slightly added pressure of responding to aircraft emergencies or sports/training injuries.
Once qualified I started life as a baby staff nurse on a 12-month rotation before settling on a very traditional T&O ward in Peterborough.
I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 for four
months as an aeromed nurse flying enemies, foreign troops, civilians and our own forces across the country and back to the UK. This is a role that no one can prepare you for and it was a challenge in itself to get around the logistics of wound care on a noisy, dusty aircraft!
When I left the RAF in 2005, I started to work bank shifts in a hospice before picking up a senior staff nurse position. After another move within the UK, I thought palliative care was where I wanted to remain but hearing some of the patient experiences and being interested in the support side of cancer diagnosis, I started to look into a cancer CNS role.
What inspired you to pursue a career as a cancer clinical nurse specialist?
Having heard some of the negative experiences of patients while going through a cancer diagnosis and through my own family experience of not having a dedicated CNS when my Dad was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, it made me want to make the difference for people.
The passion within palliative care is very present and there is so much patient support, but where patients are in limbo waiting for results or in shock about their results was where I wanted to make a difference.
I would look up to CNSs during my career and be in awe of their specialist knowledge and reassurance for patients. I started out with a fantastic team specialising in lung cancer and learnt so much as an associate CNS, but when a role came up to set up a new service as the sole nurse, I jumped at the opportunity and am very lucky to have been given the chance.
What does being a cancer CNS mean to you?
I am so proud when I get grateful feedback from patients. It means everything to me, knowing they've had the support I know my family didn't have.
Read the full interview with Dawn on the GM Cancer website.