Lung Cancer Nurses

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:22): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house on the government's recruitment of specialist lung cancer nurses in our metropolitan public hospitals?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:22): I thank the member for Torrens for her advocacy on this and a whole range of other important health matters. As the member would know, just this last Sunday we celebrated International Nurses Day, which was a great opportunity to thank all of our incredible nurses across South Australia.

Nurses play a number of key roles in our health system, and one of these roles that has been growing over the past few decades has been providing specialist support in areas of different cancer supports. This, of course, first started in relation to breast cancer and was extended to prostate cancer, etc. What we have identified is that there is a real scope for improving the care of people suffering cancer and going through their cancer treatment: having that contact with a nurse, being able to help coordinate that treatment.

One of the really devastating cancers that affects South Australians is lung cancer. Some 700 South Australian lives are lost each year and it costs the state economically near $50 million. It is obviously completely devastating in terms of the impact that it has and the lives that are lost. Up until now, we haven't had a network of cancer nurses dedicated to lung cancer in the same way that we have had for breast cancer and other types of cancers. So we made a commitment before the last election that we would establish a network of four nurses who would provide dedicated support in this area.

I am very happy to inform the house that those are now in place and operating across the state. This is an investment of $2.5 million over four years and it was part of our commitment that we made for 300 nurses across the state. This is a partnership that we have made with Lung Foundation Australia and it will fund those skilled practitioners becoming a consistent link between patients undergoing treatment and their treating teams. It is a vital link that aims to improve the journeys at an incredibly difficult time for both patients and their entire families. Sadly, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Australia and the fourth most cancer diagnosed in South Australia, so having that ongoing support is vital to making sure patients can rely on that nurse to advocate for them during their discussions about treatment options.

I would like to particularly thank Lorraine Tyler, who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago. She was somebody who went through a breast cancer journey and saw the support that was provided to her through that via the breast cancer nurses, and then sadly suffered lung cancer as well and could see the huge disparities in terms of the support that was available. She advocated very hard for us to put this in place. It is largely due to her advocacy that this has happened.

I am very sad to inform the house that in January this year Lorraine passed away. When we launched this program and launched the recruitment of these nurses a couple of months ago, we were very delighted to have her wife Kristen there with us, to say thank you to her for her advocacy that has allowed this to happen. She became such a huge advocate for the Lung Foundation. Now we have those three nurses who are working across our local health network: one in NALHN, one in CALHN and one in SALHN. In addition to that, the fourth one is a specialist respiratory care nurse, working across the Royal Adelaide Hospital and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital as well.

These are, of course, four of the 1,432 additional clinicians that we have hired, 691 additional nurses that we have hired across the two years we have been in government and this is making a real difference now for South Australians across the state who are getting that awful diagnosis of lung cancer.