Earlier in May I was fortunate enough to make the trek up from cold and wet Melbourne, to warm (and occasionally sunny) Cairns to attend the Cancer Nurses of Australia Annual Congress. The theme of the congress was “Bridging the Gaps”.
I kicked off three days of intense learning at a one-day workshop focussing on immunotherapy – a huge learning curve and I emerged with a much better understanding of what this is all about. I was also very pleased to meet some of the people involved in the KEYNOTE-158 (Pembrolizumab) trial for people with NETs (see https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02628067 for more information). It is such an exciting area of development in cancer care and it is going to be fascinating to see the impact that this will have on NETs in the future.
I was delighted to have our good friend Venecia, an endocrine nurse from Adelaide join me in hosting our conference booth. We had lots of very interested nurses come and visit us to hear more about NETs and our services, take sample copies of our new booklets, and sign up for our new Health Professionals Network.
During the congress we were delighted to have a group of nurses from our HPN join us for dinner, with lots of conversations about how the Unicorn Foundation can help support them in their roles. We emerged with some great plans for our health professional webinar series (please get in touch if you would like to know more about how to join this network).
I capped off the last day of the congress by presenting a paper that I wrote with Simone and John, focussing on the way that we are evolving our services to better serve the needs of people with NETs who live in rural areas.
The congress was a wonderful opportunity to meet so many nurses from across Australia who were keen to hear about our organisation and the services we can offer people with NETs. I have walked away with fresh inspiration and lots of ideas for the future!
