Acute Oncology job plan

The scope of acute oncology has expanded greatly over recent years, particularly as systemic treatments become more effective and complex. For instance, the advent of immune-oncology (IO) therapies has led to a new set of diverse complications necessitating more expert knowledge for AO practitioners. At the same time, the incidence of cancer continues to rise and patients can present to AO with both complications directly due to their cancer, as well as its treatment.

The demand upon AO services is severe, with approximately 3000 calls made per day from patients to AO emergency triage lines, across England alone. At the same time, capacity for urgent care and hospital bed occupancy has become constrained across the NHS, leading to a greater need for admission avoidance and reduced length of stay.

Taken together, there is an immediate need to better define the role of oncology consultants who have AO responsibilities. This should come with support within job plans to enable delivery and development of safe and effective services. The aim of this document is to provide a template upon which to develop job plans for new and existing AO consultants, within medical and clinical oncology. 

A UK Acute Oncology Society (UKAOS) consultant subgroup has developed a generic AO job plan template to support job planning and to help trusts developing new AO posts. 

A draft document has now been approved by the UKAOS and ACP, and is undergoing final consultation at the RCR, before final approval and wider dissemination. 

Your comments would be welcome - please follow this link to the ACP webpage to review the document and submit comments. The group will be accepting comments until the 28th of March 2025