Prehabilitation resources for healthcare professionals

Developed in collaboration with the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, the Centre for Perioperative Care, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the NIHR Cancer Nutrition Collaborative and the World Cancer Research Fund.

These updated 2025 guidelines build on the original guidance published in 2019. These guidelines provide detailed, evidence-based recommendations for designing and delivering prehabilitation services for people living with cancer.

They aim to support widespread adoption of prehabilitation to improve patient preparation, recovery, experience of care and sense of control. They also include practical information to help healthcare provider organisations develop services tailored to communities they serve.

Use these guidelines to:

• Support clinical decision-making
• Tailor services to local populations
• Prepare for future journal publications expanding on key topics

Read the Clinical and Implementation Guidelines (PDF)

We will be linking to seven peer-reviewed journal articles covering implementation, behaviour change, nutrition, psychology, health economics, and more.

Learn from healthcare professionals, researchers and people living with cancer about the value of prehabilitation.

Prehabilitation video series

In partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb and people living with cancer, we have created six short videos to help you introduce prehabilitation to your patients. Topics include:

• What is prehabilitation?
• Physical activity
• Eating well
• Mental wellbeing
• Alcohol moderation
• Stopping smoking 

View the prehabilitation videos.

Prehabilitation summit videos

Access recordings from the first joint NHSE and Macmillan Prehabilitation Summit to deepen your understanding and share insights with your team. These sessions highlight national progress, emerging evidence, and practical strategies for implementing prehabilitation across services. 

Watch: Summit Introduction 

Other videos from the summit

• Overview and background to prehab
• Planned Guidance
• The Parity study - What is happening across the UK
• Evidence for non surgical and surgical prehabilitation
• Learning from England
• Learning from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
• Patient Representatives Panel
• The impact of prehabilitation
• Maximising opportunities and levers
• Discussion feedback
• Concluding remarks

Podcasts and webinars

We spoke to professionals and people living with cancer to understand their experiences of prehabilitation. You can hear what they told us in our series of podcasts.

We've created our 10 top tips series to help primary care professionals support patients at every stage of the cancer pathway. The tips are designed to showcase best practice and offer practical advice for your role.

We have tips for prehabilitation, which include:

• Managing fatigue
• Prehabilitation
• Social prescribing
• Virtual consultations.

View all top tips

We invest in programmes and services that help healthcare professionals deliver more personalised cancer care. Working in partnership with communities and the NHS, we fund pilot projects to improve experiences and outcomes for people living with cancer.

Our resources are informed by real-world learning and research and are designed to support your role in service development, clinical decision-making and quality improvement.

• Personalised care planning  - tools to tailor support around individual needs
• Holistic Needs Assessments (and electronic HNAs) - guidance to help you identify and respond to what matters most to your patients.
• Quality improvement to existing cancer services - resources to help you evaluate and improve existing cancer services.

Research

• Northern Ireland Macmillan Prehabilitation Programme - evaluation of regional pilot supporting people before treatment
• Bristol Myers Squibb/Macmillan Prehabilitation report  - insights into non-surgical prehabilitation and workforce development in NHS cancer care.

These reports offer practical evidence to support service planning, workforce development and improved patient outcomes.

Find out more about our work