Evolving your Rapid Diagnostic Centre

Carole Goodchild is a service improvement lead for South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  She is currently working within the Rapid Diagnostic Centre for Non-specific Symptoms, based in Friarage Hospital, Northallerton.

During the 35 years she has worked for the Trust, her career has spanned many aspects including IT, project management, quality and performance, clinical governance and patient safety and experience. 

She has been involved in the establishment of the RDC NSS from initial “vague symptoms” pilot in 2018 and has a vested interest in the Friarage’s model of a generalist led, holistic pathway which supports top to toe assessment, faster diagnosis and appropriate onward referral.  She works closely with her clinical colleagues in what she see’s as the best job in her career to date.

Carole has a BSc (Hons) in Leadership and MSc in Service Improvement.  As well as her work within the RDC, she is currently leading on a wholescale review of the cancer MDTs and supporting Trust colleagues to implement the Best Practice Timed Pathways.

Carole lives on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors and enjoys hiking, foraging and just being in nature.  She is registered with Yoga Alliance Professionals as a qualified yoga teacher and teaches a regular class in Guisborough.

Dr Andrew Millar is a Consultant Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist at the North Middlesex University Hospital where he is also the Lead Clinician for Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer and the Viral Hepatitis Services.

He has a passion for ensuring patients are given a rapid and effective diagnosis so that treatment can start early. Dr Millar leads the development of the Multidisciplinary Diagnostic Centres, which is key project of the UCLH Cancer Collaborative. This work began when he was the London Cancer Hepato-biliary and Pancreatic Pathway Director and he now focuses on leading this growing project which is jointly funded by NHS England and Cancer Research UK.

The Multidisciplinary Diagnostic Centres aim to improve access to care for patients with concerning cancer symptoms in North Central and East London who do not meet the criteria for existing rapid referral or are to unwell to wait for a conventional appointment.

He is passionate that diagnosis must start with a careful record of symptoms and patient’s concern, supported by relevant investigations. He is also helping to develop technology to obtain clinical information from patients to enhance clinical care and provide key data for the development of new clinical decision support tools (CDSTs).

Ruth qualified as an adult nurse with a first-class honors degree from the University of Central Lancashire in 2013. She worked within the critical care team at Royal Blackburn for several years, but always had a passion for cancer care. She then went on to work as a Colorectal specialist nurse  for the next 5 years, supporting people with colorectal cancer. 

In October 2022 she commenced work as the Non-Specific Symptoms Rapid Diagnostic specialist nurse for the East Lancashire area, with a view to increasing awareness of the pathway and promoting referrals. 

She has also recently taken over as the Cancer of Unknown Primary specialist nurse, with the aim of increasing the provision of support to patients and their families, and also developing the service further. 

Dr Richard Lee is the NIHR Clinical Research Network National Specialty Lead for Screening, Prevention and Early Detection.

He is a Consultant Respiratory Physician and Champion for Early Cancer Diagnosis at the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). As co-lead of The Royal Marsden-ICR Early Diagnosis and Detection Centre, Dr Lee drives Screening, Prevention and Early Diagnosis initiatives across a number of cancer types. 

His clinical interest is early lung cancer diagnosis, as joint National Clinical Lead of the NHS England National Targeted Lung Health Check (TLHC) Programme that will pilot lung cancer screening in an eligible population of over three million participants across the UK. 

His research portfolio includes translation of artificial intelligence (AI) research to early cancer detection within the LIBRA, OCTAPUS-AI and AI-SONAR studies. He is also Principal Investigator for early diagnosis biomarker studies such as NIMBLE for lung nodules and The Royal Marsden Partners Lung Health Check biomarker study. As clinical lead for the SCOOT biomarker study, he will link biomarker research with imaging AI, within NHSE TLHC in partnership with Oxford University and the DART consortium. 

Dr Lee is also The Royal Marsden’s Chief Research Information Officer, serves on the British Thoracic Society’s lung cancer committee, and co-leads the Early Diagnosis theme of the Joint ICR-Imperial Convergence Science Centre and NIHR Oncology Translational Research Collaboration. 

His work in Early Diagnosis is funded by The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity with whom he works closely to promote early diagnosis amongst patients and colleagues.

Vicki is based at East Lancashire Hospitals Trust, a tertiary centre for pancreas and HPB conditions, Vicki works as lead nurse for Pancreas and HPB Rapid Diagnostics. 

Vicki works tirelessly to improve the diagnostic and treatment pathways for patients receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Vicki has proven experience in service improvement for pancreatic cancer patients having worked previously as a HPB Specialist Nurse in Wigan. During her 8 years in post at Wigan, Vicki successfully designed and implemented the nurse-led accelerated jaundice pathway which went on to win the Nursing Times Cancer Nursing Award in 2018. The pathway which was designed by Vicki has been adopted to date, by 8 other NHS Trusts across England.

Vicki went on to receive the Chief Nursing Officer Silver Award in November 2019, this was awarded by Chief Nursing Officer, Ruth May in recognition of Vicki’s commitment and innovative work in service improvement for pancreatic cancer patients.

Vicki’s passion and commitment to the Pancreas  RDS at ELHT contributed to the RDS being recognised Nationally with a Macmillan Professional Excellence Award in 2021.

Most recently, Vicki received the Nursing and Midwifery Parliamentary Award in 2023 in recognition of  her work in the area of pancreatic cancer, raising awareness of the disease and implementing successful changes for service improvement.