Your care options GPs, teams of health professionals working in the community, local hospitals and specialist cancer centres all offer care for people living with cancer. Your doctors and nurses should help you get the care that suits you best.

In this article

Services People Standards of care

Palliative care Hospice care

Long-term monitoring and support The future

Some of the different types of facilities you might want to find out about include:

• primary care teams, working in the community
• cancer units in district hospitals
• cancer centres in large general hospitals
• palliative care services
• hospice care
• specialist cancer centres for children
• specialist cancer units for teenagers

All of these services should link together to work for you. They should be 'patient-centred' and take account of your needs.

You may also want to ask about the different sort of people who can provide your treatment and care. Many healthcare experts think the highest standards of care are provided by:

• surgeons with specific expertise in the kind of cancer you have
• specialist teams led by consultant oncologists (specialist in cancer)
• radiotherapy and chemotherapy staff with a specific expertise in the kind of cancer you have
• specialist nurses counsellors, and palliative care teams

Standards of cancer care, and the way it's organised, vary in different parts of the country.

You may want to find out about current success rates of different units and centres in your area.

You can try asking your hospital or NHS Direct for advice.

The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (England), your local community health council (Wales), your local health council (Scotland) or your health and social services council (Northern Ireland) should also be able to help.

Some organisations have established 'minimum standards' or charters that state the very least people should expect. These are useful because if you think the service is not meeting an agreed standard, you have definite grounds for complaint.

You may want to find out about the following sets of standards:

• Hospital and unit charters. Many NHS facilities have charters giving commitments to provide certain services to certain standards. Check if the units you visit have them. If they don't, you may like to ask why.
• Community care charters. Local authority social services departments publish commitments to providing information and assessments of what people need to help them live at home. Ask your local social services department for more information.
• Standards of care for people with specific types of cancers. For example, Macmillan Cancer Support has published standards of care for women with gynaecological cancer and for women with breast cancer.
• Government standards for cancer care. These standards set out how services should be delivered. The Government checks whether hospitals meet the standards, and aim to reduce variations in quality from area to area. The set of standards for England is called the Manual for Cancer Services.

Although people think of palliative care as something offered to those whose illness can't be cured, you may come across a palliative care team at any stage of your illness. Palliative care concentrates on your quality of life and that of your family.

This means that the specialist team is particularly good at dealing with individual symptoms that may be reducing the quality of your life, such as weakness, pain, depression or a poor appetite, rather than focusing on how the cancer itself should be treated.

Palliative care is especially important for those whose illness can't be cured, but it should be available to all cancer patients. Some people need specialist palliative care support, which may be provided by teams of health professionals working from hospitals or in the community.

Hospice care allows people whose illness is no longer curable to achieve the best quality of life. Some hospices also offer services to patients who aren't terminally ill but would benefit from palliative care.

Staff are specially trained to advise on pain and symptom control and give emotional support to patients, their loved ones and friends during the patient's illness and after bereavement.

Hospice care can be provided at home, in a specialist hospice or palliative care unit, in hospital or at a hospice day centre.

If the cancer seems to be responding well to treatment, doctors will probably still want you to come back to the hospital outpatient clinic at regular intervals for check-ups. As time goes by, these visits are likely to become less frequent, and will cease if there are no more problems.

Even if your cancer isn't responding well to treatment, most people want to spend as little time as possible in hospital. Your GP should arrange for community services to help you live at home if you need them. This might include help with household tasks, or continuing advice and support from nurses.

There's always a future after a diagnosis of cancer, although timescales vary. There is a chance the cancer will recur in many cases, but many people become entirely free of the disease, and others live for years without the problems associated with their particular type of cancer.

In time, most people find the initial shock and the effects of treatment pass, and they can once again think about things other than their disease.

This article was last medically reviewed by Dr Trisha Macnair in September 2006.
First published in February 1999.