Breakthrough’s Service Pledge for Breast Cancer

At Breakthrough we’re great believers in patient involvement. We know that by working with patients we will develop the best ways of improving services. This is why we launched the Breakthrough Service Pledge for Breast Cancer.

The aim is simple: to empower patients to work in partnership with healthcare professionals to make improvements in breast cancer services.

Breakthrough’s Service Pledge template (1060 kb) sets out the standards that we believe all breast units in the UK should be striving to achieve. Breakthrough has recently updated this document to reflect newly published guidelines affecting breast care. We have available a referenced Service Pledge document (138 kb) that highlights how our standards were derived.

Breast units adapt the template to reflect their hospitals breast service. Participating breast units publish a local Service Pledge for Breast Cancer and copies are given to patients. The unit commits to deliver these standards of care to patients and specific improvement goals which are developed through working together with breast cancer patients.

So far 15 breast units across the UK have produced a Service Pledge for Breast Cancer and we’re working with a further 11. Over the next five years we aim to work with every breast unit in the UK to produce their own Service Pledge for Breast Cancer.

The Picker Institute has produced an ‘Improving the Patient Experience' factsheet highlighting the importance of patient involvement and worked with Breakthrough using the Service Pledge as a model of patient involvement in action.

The initiative was runner up in the National Centre for Involvement “Involvement to Impact” award for ‘Partnership working and Involvement’ in 2007.

The Service Pledge reached the regional finals in the Leadership for Improvement category of the Health and Social Care Awards in 2009.

More recently in October 2009 the project received the ‘Highly Commended’ award at the Excellence in Oncology Awards under the category ‘Best Charitable Initiative’

You can learn more about this initiative in the Service pledge overview (135 kb)  document.

Do you work in a local breast unit? Want to get involved with our Service Pledge? Contact us today to nominate your unit and take the first step to improving breast cancer services by working with patients.

Get started now. Contact Murray Worthy, Senior Health Service Improvement Officer, on 020 7025 0082 or email murrayw@breakthrough.org.uk.

If you’re interested in taking action in other ways, join the Breakthrough Campaigns & Advocacy Network (CAN).