Ms Amy Nolan:

We are seeing more people attending their GPs with complaints around lumps and referral to our BreastCheck clinics. There is a barrier when they get to the BreastCheck clinic because they are triaged as urgent or not urgent. As mentioned, there are huge delays in that area so there can be a diagnosis at a later-stage presentation. We are seeing younger people but we always encourage people to attend for their breast screening also. If there is a backlog in a system like this, we hear on our support line that patients are delayed and very fearful. It creates a huge amount of anxiety by the time they get through the triple assessment. It is important to say our clinicians and healthcare professionals are really working hard. Their feeling is it is all about KPIs across the hospitals and achieving them. They are trying to do workarounds to achieve those KPIs which does not benefit anybody. It does not benefit the system. Somebody needs to have chemotherapy and we cannot get them into the day ward because there is no chair in the day ward. So, we then try to get them into a bed in the hospital which does not make any sense for a day ward treatment. People are working around the system to achieve the KPIs but the capacity in the system does not exist.