NHS healer

UCH is a rapidly modernising hospital, where patients are treated in small bays or single rooms instead of large wards. Teenage cancer sufferers have a special ward provided by the Teenage Cancer Trust, complete with brightly decorated walls and a snooker table.

They've also been innovators in complementary therapies for patients. Angie Buxton-King was known to the hospital when she first approached them about offering spiritual healing or reiki in 1999 – her son Sam had been treated there briefly during his three-year battle with leukaemia until his death aged 10.

The hospital pragmatically allowed her to practice for one day a week – with such impressive results that within a couple of months she became a paid part time member of staff. Now she runs the hospital's complementary therapy unit which includes reflexologists, massage and aromatherapy as well as healers, and the service has gradually widened from haematology to cover all cancer sufferers.

UCH has invested £100 million in a new state-of-the-art Cancer centre which opens in 2012 to bring the best of international cancer care to the NHS.  This centre will provide more opportunities to develop complementary therapy services for cancer patients alongside other forms of physical and emotional support.

Buxton-King says that a fixed appointment system is impossible in a hospital setting; therapists have to be ready to treat patients on the spot in short periods of 30 minutes. The results are obvious, 'you can see people calming down and their patterns of breathing changing'. Patients often find they need less medication or are simply more psychologically able to deal with hospital treatment and bad news.

Most people access complementary therapies when they are walking well, whereas the UCLH team see people at the coalface. 'I'm not saying that we're the best, but it makes a huge difference that we're ward-based – we see people when they are very, very poorly and know how to reach them in that situation.'

Some patients are deeply sceptical of the term 'healing' or 'spiritual healing' but as Buxton-King points out, faith is irrelevant to treatment – the heart of the work is the relationship between therapist and client. Healing sessions are the most popular of the hospital's complementary therapy offerings, a snapshot survey in April of this year showed over 70% of cancer patients asking for sessions.

Now the unit is running a research programme to try to quantify results.

To make a service of this kind work in the NHS – where it's still an anomaly –takes tough political sense as well as compassion. But the integrated approach is at the heart of UCH's new building work. Buxton-King doesn't expect sudden transformations in the NHS's attitude, but runs courses for therapists who want to understand what it takes to work within the system.  FIH hopes to be providing a training session early next year.