Being diagnosed with cancer is a devastating blow for anyone, but staying positive and being proactive helps. LUCY STEPHENS finds out how a York user group is helping patients and carers to influence how cancer and palliative care services are run.

GEORGE ALBERTANO was diagnosed with prostate cancer six years ago.

The 71-year-old of Haxby is being closely monitored with blood tests, but he visits York Hospital regularly anyway - to take part in meetings of a group set up by the hospital and Selby and York Primary Care Trust for both past and present users of local cancer services.

The group is open to cancer patients and those who care for people with the disease, and George said going to the meetings helps him to stay positive.

He said: "It's a form of therapy, because one thing the group wants to do is make people who have got cancer realise that if you're positive towards it, it helps an awful lot. The whole point of the group is to encourage people not only to face things, but to do something about it."

The group was set up last autumn after a cancer and patient carer event, and has met regularly ever since.

It is not a support group, but rather a team of service users who make practical suggestions on how things should be run, with members made up of patients, carers, and healthcare professionals.

Cath Miller, Macmillan lead nurse for cancer and palliative care for Selby and York Primary Care Trust and York Hospitals Trust, said the group has already had a significant input to the NHS services. She said: "At the end of the day, cancer services must be responsive to patients' needs. We want to tailor services, to the best of our ability, to how they want them to be."

Part of the group's work has been its involvement in the creation of a new "My Notes" booklet for patients - personal records of treatment written in plain English with a glossary of terms.

Other issues to come under discussion include what information patients are given about their illness, how bad news is broken by medics, and planning of the hospital's new chemotherapy outpatient suite.

Cath said the group would like to see more patients and carers joining the group to strengthen its work.

She said: "We need them to either come along to the meetings or let us know they want to be on the circulation list."

George said: "It's important that more people join the group. They need to have a voice into the whole of the spectrum of cancer services.

"I've always been fairly positive. I'm even more positive than ever now.

"If you're positive throughout your illness, it gives you a fantastic amount of stamina to carry on. It's like a survival thing. We're all in the same boat."

For more information about the group, phone 01904 726203.