Dr Sylvia Puchalska, a clinical psychologist in our cancer psychological therapies service, which provides emotional support to our cancer patients, has been appointed as a fellow of the UCLPartners improvement programme.

UCLPartners is an academic health and science partnership which brings together people from the NHS, social care and academic world to improve the health of local people.

As part of the 12-month programme she will attend workshops with international experts, and collaborate with other fellows to seek new ideas and opportunities to improve healthcare, as well as sharing learning across other teams and departments involved in health.

Dr Puchalska said: “I was delighted to be appointed a fellow and am really looking forward to working with my peers to see what we can learn from each other to improve care for our patients, and what other ideas we can develop to improve healthcare now and in the future.”

A new initiative recently trialed by Dr Puchalska was a therapy theatre session, held in partnership with 5 in the Hive therapeutic theatre company, for children who have a parent with cancer.

Entitled, The Unexpected Guests, the session consisted of a short play before a workshop, allowing the children to express their thoughts and feelings about their parent having cancer.