About our Cancer Information Development team

All the nurses in our team are Registered General Nurses (RGNs). They all have extensive experience in nursing and cancer care. Some of the post-registration qualifications in the team include:

• oncology (cancer) nursing
• palliative care nursing
• HIV nursing
• district nursing
• chemotherapy and other cancer medicines administration
• medicines prescribing
• counselling
• academic degrees.

All our cancer information nurses are registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). This is the professional body and independent regulator for nurses and midwives in the UK.

The NMC:

• sets out the skills, knowledge and characteristics all nurses must have to be able to practise
• aims to promote high education and professional standards for nurses across the UK
• looks after the register of nurses allowed to practise.

To keep up their registration, our cancer information nurses must renew their membership every year and revalidate every 3 years. Revalidation means they have to show how they meet the standards needed to be a registered nurse. This includes:

• using their nursing skills for at least 450 hours over 3 years
• taking part in training and other professional development activity every year
• showing ways they have improved their practice in their work.

The nurse team also keep their information and writing skills up to date with ongoing training. See How do we prepare our information to be published? below.

We may use AI technology to help us create metadata for our website. Metadata, including the meta title and meta description, are a short description of the content which helps search engines like Google give you the most relevant results based on the words you search for. Metadata only appears on search engine results pages.

AI technology is not used to write our medical cancer information.

Our editorial teams bring many years’ experience in making information readable, inclusive and easy to navigate. They prepare content for publication across the range of our formats, including in print, for web, as PDFs, and in audio, video (including in British Sign Language), easy read, and translations.

Our editors come from a wide range of backgrounds, and bring various qualifications, experience and skills to add value to our information. Like our nurses, they take part in regular professional development.

Our whole team is committed to creating high-quality health information. We are all familiar with the requirements of the PIF Tick. Our writers and editors train with organisations such as the Plain English Campaign and the Patient Information Forum, as well as self-directed learning, to keep informed on best practice in producing health information. They develop skills in areas including:

• writing and editing health information
• health literacy
• digital literacy
• aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion, such as audience needs and inclusive language
• making data accessible
• digital accessibility
• print and web design.

We aim to make our information feel relevant and appealing by including stories, photos and quotes from people who have been affected by cancer. We are always interested to hear your stories, so do contact us if you would like to help shape our information by sharing them.