Anita Killingsworth

Anita is the Macmillan Nurse Consultant and Lead Cancer Nurse, she works with the sarcoma Clinical Service Lead and Clinical Service Manager ensuring that each patient and family receives excellent care at every stage of the care pathway and that standards and targets for cancer care are achieved. The ROH sarcoma service is a specialised supra-regional sarcoma diagnostics and surgical treatment service for adults, young people and children referred with bone and soft tissue tumours and provides a tertiary metastatic bone disease service.

Anita leads the Macmillan team of clinical nurse specialists (CNS) and advanced nurse practitioners (ANP), counsellor and navigators caring for patients with bone and soft tissue sarcomas and metastatic bone cancer. The specialist nurses are keyworkers and contact the patients after the daily and weekly MDT meetings to ensure the patient and family are aware of the plan for their care. They assess patients in clinic and on the ward to ensure patients and families are supported holistically and they provide information for patients, carers and families on practical and financial aspects relating to their care. 

Anita and the ANPs run nurse led clinics each week, following up patients with soft tissue sarcomas and seeing new GP referrals. The new patients are assessed, examined and investigations are ordered to obtain a diagnosis and meet our faster diagnosis standard of 28 days from referral to letting the patient know the outcome. Anita runs a Denosumab clinic each week, managing and giving treatment to patients with giant cell bone tumours . 

Anita has been working in the sarcoma service at ROH for 20 years, initially as an advanced nurse practitioner and as nurse consultant for the past 5 years. Prior to coming to ROH this she worked as a Cancer Service Matron and Haematology Ward Manager.