We are The Christie magazine Oct 2025

News in brief

Record number of treatments delivered For the first time in our 125-year history, The Christie has delivered more than 100,000 chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments in a single year. Between April 2024 and March 2025, staff provided 105,827 treatments to over 14,000 patients. Gemma Jones, Lead Nurse for Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy, said: “Despite these record numbers, our colleagues still aim to provide the highest standards of compassion and care for the people they treat.” Patient Suzanne Lackin, who received the milestone 100,000th treatment, added: “I have never been treated as a number. I feel so lucky and grateful to have this incredible place on my doorstep.”

News in brief

Future Christie: shaping the next 10 years The Christie has launched Future Christie, a 10-year programme to make care more personal, efficient and joined-up while keeping the same compassionate touch we’re known for. One of the first changes is MyChristie, our new patient portal, which is now live and giving patients easier access to appointments and information. Future developments include linking the portal with the NHS App, new digital tools to help patients share how they’re feeling between treatments and using artificial intelligence for smarter radiotherapy planning and meeting recordings. Work has also begun on a new electronic patient record system to give staff the full picture of each patient’s care.

Pioneering advanced nursing practitioner Karen retires

After more than 30 years at The Christie, Advanced Practitioner Karen Johnson retired on 10 October 2025. Joining as a ward nurse in 1991 and going on to become The Christie’s first advanced practitioner, she's shaped modern oncology nursing, blending clinical excellence with innovation in service development to deliver outstanding patient-centred care. She is often the first clinician a patient will meet at The Christie and can remain their point of contact throughout treatment and follow-up. Today, because of Karen’s pioneering journey, The Christie has 75 qualified advanced practitioners and 26 in training, supporting almost all clinical areas. The advanced practitioner career pathway is now open to all health professionals, not just nurses. Strong results in latest national inpatient survey The latest Care Quality Commission inpatient survey shows that patients continue to rate their experience at The Christie among the best in the country. Patients gave an overall experience score of 9.2 out of 10, placing The Christie third nationally. We were also one of just eight trusts recognised as an outlier

Re-accreditation as a comprehensive cancer centre The Christie has been re-accredited by the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI), once again being recognised as a comprehensive cancer centre. The OECI is a network of Europe’s top cancer centres, focused on improving care, research and education. Following a peer review earlier this year, the OECI highlighted The Christie as a leading example for both patient care and research, noting significant progress since the last review. Our Christie Institute of Cancer Education was also praised for its extensive training programmes reaching healthcare professionals across the UK. The report highlighted our motivated staff, patient centred care, and the impact of our research. This re-accreditation reaffirms the Trust’s role as a leader in integrated cancer care and innovation.

Pictured: Rikki Goddard-Fuller, Director of Christie Education Vicky Sharples, Chief Nurse and Executive Director of Quality Neil Bayman, Medical Director Fiona Blackhall, Director of Research and Innovation

for having a high number of scores rated ‘much better than expected’. Patients scored us highly for dignity and respect (9.7), cleanliness (9.6), confidence in doctors (9.7) and privacy (9.9).

If you’d like to read more about these stories, please visit: christie.nhs.uk/news

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