The Churchill Fellowship is the UK’s national memorial to Sir Winston Churchill. It promotes the global exchange of ideas and understanding between peoples, through the work

of the Fellows we appoint each year.

Alison Taylor, a Nurse Consultant at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship for 2024 to visit Australia, and to liaise with teams in the Netherlands and the USA remotely. Her project will be to research the psychological and emotional support for people with a cancer of unknown primary (CUP) with the aim to improve the quality care for people with CUP.

I am an acute oncology and cancer of unknown primary (CUP) nurse consultant. Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is a cancer that has spread (metastasized) but the primary site cannot be found despite extensive testing. It is the sixth most common cause of cancer death in the UK, but many people have never heard about it. As an acute oncology nurse I have been working with patient with CUP for over 12 years. I have seen at first hand the psychological impact the uncertainty of a CUP diagnosis brings and the devastating effects on patients and their families.

My Fellowship explores managing uncertainty and providing psychological and emotional support for patients with CUP. I will learn from the Australian SUPER NEXT team as they have focused on not only improving diagnostic techniques, genomic testing and treatments but also the psychological impact of CUP. They have a wide network of experts across Australia who work closely together to ensure the best support for patients with CUP, despite the geographical challenges. I will travel to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin during my fellowship, and then link in remotely with the Netherlands and the USA.

I am passionate to learn and improve this for people with CUP, then to share this learning with other professions and create a CUP expert network to improve the equity and quality of care for people with CUP in the UK.

The application process for 2025 Churchill fellowships is now open until 12^th of November 2024. For more information look on their website.

https://www.churchillfellowship.org/