About the Award: The Clinical Travel Grant was launched by EONS in 2009 to support nurses who are working in oncology to obtain clinical experience by visiting another cancer centre/unit. The grant is awarded towards costs incurred (clinical site fee, travel, accommodation and expenses) by the successful applicant during the clinical site visit (for a minimum duration of one week).

Recipient: Beatrix Kirchhofer

Beatrix Kirchhofer, RN, BA, MscN, finished her professional training as a Registered Nurse 1990 in Ueberlingen at the lake Constance (Germany). Several years of practice followed after the training, among others in Zurich (Switzerland) on a surgical ward, in Herdecke (Germany) on a neurosurgical ward and in Jerusalem (Israel) in a home for aged people. In 2006 she started working in the Centre for Tumorbiology, an oncologic hospital in Freiburg (Germany), her home city. This hospital includes a wing for patients who get therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation or palliative care as well as a rehabilitation wing for patients who finished all their therapies. Beatrix started in this hospital in the rehabilitation ward as a regular nurse, since October 2006 she worked as a deputy head nurse.

In 2008 she moved to the acute therapy wing; in January 2009 she undertook the management of the ward until February 2013. Currently she is the manager of the outpatient clinic in the Centre for Tumorbiology and furthermore, she is an advanced nurse practitioner in nursing science which is quite new in Germany.

Beatrix completed her Bachelor’s degree (BA) in management for health professions in 2008 at the Catholic University of applied Sciences Freiburg (Germany) and her master’s degree (MscN) in 2013 at the University Cardiff (Wales/UK).  

Recipient: Lyndel Moore

Lyndel Moore currently works at the Great Western Hospital Foundation Trust as the Interim Lead Cancer & Lead Chemotherapy Nurse. She has worked for many years in cancer care initially in Australia, and in the last 16years in the UK as a clinical nurse specialist. She travelled to the UK to complete an MSc Cancer Care in London where she met her husband and stayed!

She has been fortunate to work in a strategic position developing chemotherapy services in line with the National Chemotherapy Advisory Group (NCAG) recommendations. This has included developing an Acute Oncology Service, implementing e-prescribing, implementing 24hr telephone triage service and more recently starting a mobile chemotherapy service with the support of a charity. Lyndel has also enjoyed the autonomy of working as an advanced nurse practitioner reviewing chemotherapy patients in clinic.

More recently, the team were successful in becoming a pilot site for electronic holistic needs assessment (e-HNA) and have developed nurse-led clinics to support this activity along with end of treatment care planning. Survivorship programmes are needing to be developed locally and Lyndel welcomes the opportunity to travel to the USA to learn from their experiences. She will visit the Memorial Sloane Kettering Hospital in New York & the Dana Farber Cancer Centre in Boston, both of which have well developed survivorship programmes. She anticipates sharing this information with colleagues, users of the service & with the wider Oncology nursing team to bring benefit to more from this experience.