Improving the Biopsy Pathway for Sarcoma Patients: A Quality Improvement Project

Jo Coleman, won a peer-reviewed poster competition at RNOH's Safety Conference in March 2025, on her project and poster titled ‘Improving the Biopsy Pathway for Sarcoma Patients: A Quality Improvement Project’. She says:

“A year or so ago, as a team of nurses we could see that there was a problem with the biopsy pathway. 

Patients were getting phone calls out of the blue, often on a Friday afternoon, and receiving the difficult news that they might have cancer and needed a biopsy. These patients could be out on the school run, in the office or walking round a supermarket and weren’t in the right place or frame of mind to digest the information we were giving them. 

As well wanting to support patients through these conversations, there was inefficiencies to improve too with regards to MDT working and streamlining the patient experience.

In May last year we mapped out what a better pathway could look like and divided the patient pool into those with a high or low suspicion of cancer. We created a clinic on a Monday morning run by two CNS’ which the high-suspicion patients are pre-booked into and the CNS discusses their diagnosis with them. This gives them time to prepare for the news, means they’re better able to retain the information we’re giving, and makes these difficult conversations that bit easier. For the low suspicion patients, we also now run a clinic on a Monday morning where the Associate CNS is able to do the same.

You’ll see on the poster some of the positive feedback we’ve had from patients and the difference it’s made to the way we work. This started as a QI project but is now a fully embedded way of working for us and we’re really pleased with the results.

If anyone has any questions they’re free to reach out to me.”