Cancer and its treatments can affect your patient’s everyday life and relationships. We can offer free, short-term phone counselling to help your patients and those closest to them, work through any cancer related concerns.
Our cancer nurses can discuss your patient’s needs and refer them to our Nurse Counsellors.
Our Nurse Counselling Service is staffed by experienced cancer nurses who have completed further education to become Registered Counsellors.
If further psychological care is needed, our Nurse Counsellors can refer the person to registered and specialised psychologists through our partnership with Cancer Council Queensland. Eligibility criteria applies.
What support does our cancer counselling service provide?
We can assist with a range of concerns including:
- Adjusting to life with cancer
- Stress and difficulty coping
- Sleep difficulties
- Treatment side-effects
- Uncertainty about the future
- Cancer-related depression and anxiety
- Loss
- Family or relationship problems
- Sexual problems
- Survivorship
- Fear of recurrence
- Therapy related to end of life
- Bereavement support
Eligibility criteria
As we have limited resources, we need to ensure that our counselling service is the most suitable for patients and carers and that all other options for support have been considered. Our cancer nurses will determine the person’s eligibility for counselling based on the following criteria:
- Cancer-specific concern
Does the caller’s main/primary concern clearly relate to their own or a family member/close friend’s cancer, and does not pre-date the diagnosis?
- Degree of distress and risk factors - to identify those people requiring additional support and offer referral to psychosocial and other relevant support services. Our nurses use the Distress Thermometer scale which is adapted from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).
- Access to other services e.g. in hospital psycho-oncology services, GP, private psychologists
How to refer your patients
If you have a patient or carer that needs counselling support, please click on the button below and fill in the referral form and one of our cancer nurses will contact them directly within two business days.
Cancer support referral
Our nurses will determine if counselling will best meet the needs of the person based on level of distress and eligibility and assist them to book an appointment with one of our Nurse Counsellors.
Appointments are available Monday to Friday during business hours.
For patients that do not meet the eligibility criteria for psychological counselling, we will provide information on what other types of support could be available to them.