ABSTRACT
In 1998 there were approximately 1,700 nurses assisting in the delivery of care and support of families for an estimated 300,000 people in the United Kingdom who had been diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Cancer is an excessive cell division of both normal and/or abnormal cells creating organ and system dysfunction. All systems can be affected, as in the case of leukaemia which is a mass production of white blood cells causing a suppression of the number of essential red oxygen-carrying cells. Cancers are malignant and have the ability to produce metastases (secondary deposits), for example, cancer of the breast causes metastasis in the bone.
