Nurses make history at Basildon Hospital (From Echo)

Women are first nursing duo to carry out cancer patient procedure

9:10am Monday 10th October 2011 in News

Talented two – Elizabeth Melleney and Andrea Cartwright

A PAIR of nurses have made history by becoming the first nursing duo to perform a complex medical procedure.

Elizabeth Melleney and Andrea Cartwright have paved the way for future generations of nurses by teaming up to insert feeding tubes directly into cancer patients’ stomachs at Basildon Hospital.

The procedure has previously been performed by doctors and one nurse and a team of doctors elsewhere in the country, but the pair are the first nurse-only team to do it.

The 20-minute operation involves inserting a feeding tube into a patient’s stomach through the abdomen under sedation.

It is an alternative to the common method of putting the tube down a patient’s throat, used since the early 1990s.

Ms Cartwright, 47, a senior nutrition nurse specialist from Basildon, said: “Some cancer patients aren’t able to eat or drink when they’ve undergone chemotherapy or radiotherapy because their throats are too sore.

“In December last year, medical guidelines were published saying inserting a feeding tube by throat risks transferring cancer cells from the gullet, throat or mouth into the patient’s stomach, which can cause a secondary cancer.

“This was a springboard to us introducing it.”

The two nurses, share more than five decades of experience.

As a nurse endoscopist, Ms Melleney, 47, from Basildon, is equally as qualified as a consultant to carry out an endoscopy. This involves using a camera to examine internal organs.

Her role in the procedure is to use the camera to find a suitable position for the tube.

Ms Cartwright then forms a passage into the stomach by slowly widening the diameter of a needle and then inserting the tube through the hole.

She has now performed the procedure three times, on patients aged between 50 and 70.

Ms Cartwright said: “A surgeon taught me how to place the tube and I had supervised placements until I felt comfortable to do it myself.

“It was daunting the first time, but it went really well and the second time I was quicker.

“The patients are grateful for the new procedure because they want the best chance of being cured.”

Despite making history, the nurses are modest about their efforts.

Ms Melleney said: “We didn’t even realise we were the first nurses to do it until we were told afterwards.”