Primary care community

Macmillan GPs are practising GPs who devote an average of a day per week to work with Macmillan and primary healthcare teams to make a recognisable improvement to cancer care across the UK.

They are recognised locally as cancer clinical leads and will often hold several roles in addition to their daily GP role. Their role as a Macmillan GP spans the whole care pathway including work on early diagnosis, supporting people living with cancer, and enabling people to die well.

We don’t fund GPs to provide direct care to people with cancer; the Macmillan GP role involves working through leadership and influencing in a range of areas. From enabling access to cancer education for other GPs, to supporting commissioning of cancer services (including pathway and service redesign), and providing practical support to GPs to help them recognise and manage people with cancer. Macmillan GPs will also work towards improving communication between professionals. More recently, we’ve also been working with practice nurses to test the concept of managing cancer alongside other long-term conditions.

Today, there are around 200 Macmillan GPs and over 100 practice nurses who work with Macmillan as part of our primary care community.

To find out more, email the Macmillan GPs team.

Our community of Macmillan GPs are supported by a smaller strategic group of Macmillan GP Advisers. They work locally to offer peer support to Macmillan GPs in their area, and with Macmillan teams on the development of services for people affected by cancer.

Macmillan GP Advisers also work as a UK-wide group to influence and support implementation of our strategic priorities for primary care.

We recognise that for many people, cancer is a long-term condition that can often be effectively managed by primary care professionals - in particular, practice nurses (PNs).  To support this, we’ve developed a Cancer Course for Practice Nurses, which has following aims and objectives, to: 

• enhance the knowledge, skills, attitudes and confidence of PNs to take a more active role in managing cancer as a long term condition
• enable practical application of learning by PNs in their place of work
• allow PNs to become more involved in providing support to people affected by cancer
• improve the confidence and knowledge of PNs to enable signposting to appropriate resources for the health and well being of people affected by cancer
• adopt a changed pattern of care involving more proactive and scheduled interactions with people living with cancer
• make use of appropriate clinical tools in order to identify patient needs and know how to encourage and support people to self-manage
• be seen as a resource for cancer by colleagues in their practice and act as a catalyst for the practice to provide better support to people living with and beyond cancer, as well as those affected by cancer.