Claire - Specialist Occupational Therapist

I came to Occupational Therapy a little later in life when I saw the amazing work that occupational therapists did to support and enhance the lives of family members. Through my training I wanted to work in a service that supported people as holistically as possible, as so often in healthcare the funding and roles are split into physical health and mental health camps. I’ve worked hard to realise that goal and now work as a Specialist Occupational Therapist in supportive and palliative care at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

My role spans two separate services under the same Palliative Care team. The first is an Enhanced Supportive Care outpatient service which supports people diagnosed with an incurable cancer to manage symptoms alongside active palliative treatment. Day to day I work with patients and their families in clinic or virtually supporting them with fatigue management strategies, breathlessness management strategies, sleep management, anxiety management, adapting roles and routines, values-based goal-setting and equipment provision as needed.

Although challenging at times the work is incredibly rewarding in that I truly believe that making small changes with someone for them to be able to engage in meaningful activity, for example, doing the things that really matter to them, can have a profound impact on their quality of life. The second service I work in is the Cambridge Breathlessness Intervention Service which engages people with chronic breathlessness in non-pharmacological self-management strategies. Patients may have cancer, respiratory conditions or heart disease and although medically managed and optimised still experience chronic and disabling breathlessness. In this AHP-led service I work with other occupational therapists and physiotherapists and visit people in their own homes to support breathlessness management through strategies such as breathing retraining and breathing exercises, anxiety management including relaxation and mindfulness, and support to exercise or be more active including graded activity and goal-setting. I really enjoy both the overlap and differences between my two roles and feel lucky to be valued as an AHP working in these palliative care services.

I have been a Macmillan Professional for just over 5 years and have found the support from Macmillan so helpful in both my daily roles and work with patients, and also my career development. I have completed a range of online and face-to-face training through their dedicated education hub. This was especially helpful around the Covid-19 pandemic when communication went from being predominantly in person to almost exclusively virtual, and the communication training and support offered was really tailored and supportive. I have also applied for and been granted Macmillan funding to complete a post-graduate level course in managing fatigue, which I successfully completed this year. I have been able to see and reflect on direct benefits to my patients from this learning which I wouldn’t have been able to do without Macmillan’s support.

In addition to being proudly adopted by Macmillan I am also really proud to be an AHP, working amongst other AHPs who inhabit such a broad range of roles, specialisms and services, but all with an important and integral part to play in effective and excellent cancer care. I am even prouder to be an Occupational Therapist and to help educate on the breadth of the profession, which is mind-boggling really from rehab to role-emerging services, with children to the elderly, for physical disabilities and mental health conditions and of course palliative care. So many times I have had to explain my role and what Occupational Therapy is (not the same as working in an organisation’s Occupational Health team!) and people often have experience of one area of OT (such as rehab) and are confused and surprised to find that we work in so many different roles and services too. I like that though, explaining how adaptable we are and how specialised we can be.

Thanks to Macmillan we can share our knowledge and experiences, make new connections, and remind the world of the important role of AHPs in excellent cancer care. We might even get to eat some cake.