Nurses play a vital role in delivering safe, compassionate and person-centred cancer care.
Whether you're new to cancer services or an experienced specialist practitioner, ACCEND can help you identify your strengths, understand the capabilities relevant to your role, and plan your future professional development.
Cancer nursing offers diverse and rewarding career opportunities across acute, community, specialist, research and leadership settings. ACCEND provides a framework to support both career progression and lifelong learning.
Cancer nursing continues to evolve, with increasing opportunities for nurses to work across treatment pathways, personalised care, leadership, research and advanced practice. ACCEND can help you:
Understand Your Role Identify the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for your current area of practice.
Plan Your Career Explore future career pathways and understand what capabilities may be required for progression.
Support Professional Development Identify development opportunities aligned to your role, interests and aspirations.
Evidence Your Practice Use ACCEND to support appraisal, revalidation, clinical supervision and development discussions.
Develop Specialist Skills Identify opportunities to develop expertise in specialist areas of cancer care.
Improve Patient Experience Ensure you have the knowledge and skills needed to provide high-quality, personalised care to people affected by cancer.
ACCEND is based on levels of practice rather than job titles. Many nurses in cancer services will identify with one or more of the following levels:
Registered Nurses new to cancer care, such as on their preceptor or have transfered into cancer services.
Enhanced Nurses who have developed specialist knowledge and responsibilities within cancer services. Example roles include; Clinical Nurse Specialists, Acute Oncology Nurses, SACT Nurses, Research Nurses.
Advanced Senior Clinical Nurse Specialists, Advanced Clinical Practitioners and other senior nursing roles.
Consultant Relevant for Nurse Consultants, and strategic nursing leaders operating at organisational, regional or national levels.
Remember, ACCEND is flexible. You may find that elements of your role align with more than one level of practice. If you're still not sure, you can always use the ACE Level Checker.
If you're relativley new to Cancer Care, you may wish to complete Foundations of Cancer Care first before exploring the framework and other Learning and Development opportunites.
“I haven’t had much experience of cancer patients before and it gave me a whistle stop tour of all the stages of a patient’s journey. As an oncology nurse, I’ll be treating the side effects and symptoms of cancer and its treatments, so it was really good to have an insight of how they work.” Rosie, Newly Qualified Staff Nurse
ACCEND is designed to support every stage of your nursing career, from registration through to advanced and consultant-level practice.
“As a qualified nurse starting in a new role, [ACCEND] gave me a good knowledge base in order to succeed in oncology.” Millie, Staff Nurse
The framework can help you evidence your experience, identify learning needs and build a personalised development plan that aligns with your career aspirations.
We recommend completing a self-assessment against your current level of practice and exploring the capabilities relevant to your role.
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