Sharon Longden
Lead Lung Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS)
Job role
To provide nursing expertise and expert knowledge in the care and management of lung cancer patients throughout the lung cancer pathway, acting as patient advocate and delivering advanced nursing skills and highly specialised advice and personalised support to this patient group and to other health care professionals caring for them. Supporting patients through the lung cancer pathway, clinical assessment, and complex symptom management.
Area of responsibility
Providing care to all patients referred to AGH with a suspicion of lung cancer, triage of local GP referrals, contacting patients and requesting investigations, providing information and support throughout the lung cancer pathway.
Coordinate access to care and signpost to the right information and education resources to support patients in making decisions; Discussing and providing information about complex treatment options and supporting patients with the decision-making process providing all necessary information to allow them to make an informed choice.
To develop and implement clinical guidelines, protocols and polices to ensure evidence-based clinical practice and quality standards.
Line management of the lung nurse specialist team and provide effective clinical leadership in line with NHS leadership framework.
Point of contact at the hospital
Email: sharon.longden@nhs.net or anhsft.lungcns@nhs.net
Telephone: 01535 294535
Professional background
I am the lead lung cancer clinical nurse specialist at AGH and have been in post since 2013. My career background is mainly in respiratory medicine. Prior to joining AGH I was the unit manager of the respiratory high dependency unit at Royal Preston hospital. Following a family experience of lung cancer and the excellent care and support we had from the lung cancer nurse specialists at Airedale at the time, I decided to have a career change and applied for the role of lung cancer clinical nurse specialist at AGH to allow me to give the same amount of compassion and support to others that we had received ourselves as a family. I joined the team in 2013 and have helped to develop the service over the past 11 years, I have been the team leader since 2017. I am passionate about providing high quality evidence-based nursing care for lung cancer patients and their families and dedicated to ensuring that they receive expert advice and support from our team, and they have a point of contact throughout their investigations, at diagnosis and while on treatment.
Within the team we have me as lead lung cancer clinical nurse specialist, Sam and Nicola who are lung cancer clinical nurse specialists, Jayne who is our pathway navigator and Drew who is our lung cancer care coordinator.
I am proud to be part of such a dedicated team of nurse specialists and look forward to developing the service further in line with local and national initiatives and research and in response to our patient’s needs.
