Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the North Lancashire and South Cumbria Breast Screening programme as an Improving Uptake Officer. This position is a full time, fixed term position for 12 months to cover maternity leave from March/April 2025.

Cancer screening programmes are a unique aspect of the Health Service and play an important role in protecting the health of the population.  The uptake in Lancashire across the breast screening programme is below the national average and declining year on year for breast.  

·        The aim of this role is to target patients in lower uptake practices for breast screening; to drive uptake up and to increase the number of people who receive screening. This will potentially lead to: 

·         Earlier diagnosis 

·         Effective treatment packages 

·         Saving lives 

·      GP endorsement has been found to increase uptake, therefore the Improving Uptake Officer will work collaboratively on behalf of the breast screening programme, GP practices to encourage GPs and primary care staff to acknowledge the importance of their role and endorsement in screening on uptake. 

Main duties of the job

• Visit GP practices and to liaise with health care professionals in organising promotional information/ events in promoting Breast Screening to hard to reach groups of women.

• Educate women on breast awareness and breast screening providing relevant breast screening information. 

• Support GP practices in helping them target non-attenders. 

• Continue to implement a communication plan across Lancashire and South Cumbria – including progressing text reminders  

• Provide feedback reports, evaluation and recommendations as agreed with commissioners 

• Continue to implement interventions as appropriate to encourage individual to attend for screening based on evidence gathered from the project 

• Develop a sustainability plan 

• Development and implementation of a project plan including agreed milestones  

• Interim and end of year reports to include evaluation and recommendations, service development and improvements made due to recommendations. 

• Agreed KPIs including number of: 

• Agreed milestones delivered  

• Non-attenders by age, clinic, ethnicity, harder to reach groups and postcode 

Working for our organisation

We operate from three main hospitals-Furness General Hospital (FGH) in Barrow, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI), and Westmorland General Hospital (WGH) in Kendal, as well as a number of community healthcare premises including Millom Hospital and GP Practice, Queen Victoria Hospital in Morecambe, and Ulverston Community Health Centre. 

FGH and the RLI have a range of General Hospital services, with full Emergency Departments, Critical/Coronary Care units and various Consultant-led services. 

WGH provides a range of General Hospital services, together with an Urgent Treatment Centre, that can help with a range of non-life threatening conditions such as broken bones and minor illnesses. 

All three main hospitals provide a range of planned care including outpatients, diagnostics, therapies, day case and inpatient surgery. In addition, a range of local outreach services and diagnostics are provided from community facilities across Morecambe Bay.