'Quick skin cancer pathway the best birthday gift'

A man successfully operated on for skin cancer just four weeks after he went to the GP to have a mole checked says being part of a pilot to speed up treatment time was "the best thing ever".

Richard Alun Jones from Stourbridge had recently retired from his position at Jaguar Land Rover when his partner noticed changes to a mole on his back.

He had the operation to remove it as part of a new nurse-led pathway at Dudley's Russells Hall Hospital on his 61st birthday last August and was later told it was melanoma.

"It was the best birthday present. Just get rid of it," he said. "Thankfully they captured it. They got it."

The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust's direct-to-surgery pathway aims to take patients from a telephone consultation with a nurse to surgery within the same week, removing the need for a face-to-face consultant appointment.

It was developed by lead cancer nurse Lucy Smith to ensure those with suspected cancer could be assessed, biopsied and treated sooner.

She explained all patients went through the trust's well-established teledermatology triage system, with consultant dermatologists assessing their images online.

"We can then streamline patients into the best pathway for them," she said, adding patient choice was "paramount".

"There will be complex patients that need to see a consultant.

"But there are patients that can come through a nurse-led route that are simple excisions that we know need to come off and time is of the essence."

A four-month pilot from June to October last year supervised by a plastic surgeon and dermatologist treated 80 patients, 70% of whom were found to have skin cancer, pre-cancerous changes or an abnormal mole.

The service now sees about 40 to 50 patients a month, the trust said.

Jones said his initial trepidation about not seeing a consultant face-to-face soon melted away.

"I was just informed all the way. I knew exactly what was going on," he said. "That reassurance and time are the two things [you want] when you've got cancer."

After surgery under local anaesthetic, he was told the mole had been a melanoma when he returned to clinic for his follow-up.

The cells underneath the cancer cells were clear, but he was booked in for a second operation in October to ensure he got the all-clear.

He said he would recommend the nurse-led pathway to others.

"You want that thing gone and you want to know that they have done everything they can to make sure it doesn't return," he said.

"For me, it was a quicker process, and I would rather go down that route than go through a consultant who has bigger fish to fry.

"Definitely go through this process if it's offered to you because it's been the best thing ever."

Skin cancer referrals to the trust have risen sharply from 4,985 in 2023 to 7,793 in 2025, it said.

Smith encouraged the public to be "vigilant" about their skin to catch suspected cancers early.

She added it felt "amazing" to have successfully developed the quicker pathway.

"To be able to develop this service and get it working in Russells Hall, and for it to benefit patients and to get excellent patient satisfaction, just means the world."

Jones said his experience had made him focus on what he wanted out of life.

"Within a month of the last operation we were in the Caribbean," he said. "It's getting things done, because life is short."

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