Nurses and patients reject cut to PCFA specialist nursing service
Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA) has asked Health Minister Mark Butler to explain his decision to end funding for its Prostate Cancer Specialist Nursing Service, as new reports reveal strong opposition among those affected.
Click here to read the story in the Australian.
On 31 August, the Government announced that Commonwealth funding for the service would end on 30 June 2027. The money will go to another provider under an all-cancer model.
The government did not consult with the specialist nurses and patients who will be most affected before announcing the decision.
The service funds 96 PCFA Specialist Nurses in hospitals and treatment centres across Australia. They are part of PCFA's national network of 131 Specialist Nurses, who deliver around 150,000 patient consultations each year.
Nurses and patients speak out
A voluntary workforce consultation has revealed 96 per cent of specialist nurses impacted by the decision oppose the move and have raised serious concerns.
In response to the consultation, six in 10 said they fear prostate cancer expertise would be diluted in an all-cancer model, and one in 10 said they were already looking for other roles.
A separate analysis of 500 messages posted online and sent via email found that fewer than one per cent of the community supported the decision, and one in three asked the Government directly to reverse it.
Around half of those messages were sent by men living with prostate cancer.
"The nurse helped me through the system and I believe is the main reason I am alive now," wrote one patient in a regional centre.
PCFA CEO Anne Savage said PCFA had asked the Minister for a statement of reasons for his decision and was keeping all options open.
"Our Specialist Nurses and hundreds of men and families have now told the government, in their own words, what this decision means for them. We have called on the Minister to listen," Ms Savage said.
"Our priority is the wellbeing of our workforce and the men and families we support. PCFA's service cannot be replicated or replaced and is not the government's to give away."
PCFA Director of Nursing, Adjunct Professor Sally Sara, said the service had been built over 15 years with millions of dollars in independent funding from PCFA and the community.
"PCFA Specialist Nurses save lives. Our Specialist Nursing Service cannot be replicated or replaced - we are the only organisation in the country with the expert knowledge and the clinical networks to deliver best-practice specialist nursing care for men and families with prostate cancer," she said.
A 40-year nursing expert, Dr Sara said the decision would end funding for PCFA's clinical leadership and governance, site monitoring, performance reporting, evaluation, and resource distribution.
"If enacted, this ill-considered decision will mean Specialist Nurses will lose access to PCFA's unique education, mentoring and training program, refined over nearly 15 years for the Australian context to give nurses the depth of prostate cancer expertise men and families rely on.
"Specialist expertise isn't something you can hand over with a contract or replace with a short course. It takes years of training and mentoring to build, and once our nurses lose that support, it can't be rebuilt overnight.
"The loss of PCFA's leadership will result in a severely diminished standard of care, jeopardising patient safety and treatment outcomes and compromising overall survival for Australian men," Dr Sara said.
Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand President, Professor Damien Bolton, called for the government to reverse the decision.
"Prostate cancer nursing is a specialist field requiring detailed knowledge of diagnosis, treatment, side effects, survivorship and advanced disease," he said.
"Urologists see every day that prostate cancer care is not confined to a diagnosis, an operation or a hospital episode. Men must make difficult decisions at several points in their care, often while dealing with fear, uncertainty and information they have never encountered before.
"PCFA Prostate Cancer Specialist Nurses provide the continuity that allows those decisions to be informed, timely and connected to clinical care. For advanced disease, the need becomes more complex rather than less. Men may move between urology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, nuclear medicine, primary care and palliative care.
"PCFA Specialist Nurses help coordinate these interfaces, reinforce clinical plans, support men experiencing fatigue, sexual dysfunction, continence problems and the effects of androgen deprivation and other therapies, and ensure that partners and families are not left to navigate an increasingly complicated system alone.
"We support further investment in cancer nursing. It should not come at the expense of a proven specialist service," Professor Bolton said.
PCFA will launch both reports at Parliament House this Thursday 15 October, calling for the Minister to reverse the decision and guarantee funding through to 30 June 2032.
People can get involved via www.pcfa.org.au/dayofaction.
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