The first nursing service that developed out of Peter Mac was in 1950 when a Visiting Nursing program was set up to support people dying at home. The Peter MacCallum Clinic, a patient treatment facility set up through a 1948 Act of Parliament directing the establishment of a centralised specialist Cancer Institute in Australia to provide both research and treatment for cancer. This reorganisation of services was intended to deal with the ongoing problem of low cure rates and static death rates at that time.(Public education formed a separate part of the act).

As nurses were employed in outpatient clinics, and from 1954, inpatient settings, there was a recognition of the need for specialty education and training. So in 1958 the first cancer related specialty post basic nursing course in the southern hemisphere was developed and called "Radiotherapeutic Nursing". The course evolved into the Post Basic Oncological Nursing Course. Apart from 3 individual years, the training program was conducted annually until 1992 following transfer of hospital courses to the tertiay sector.

The first tertiary cancer nursing course had been established at the College of Nursing Victoria in 1990 by Sanchia Aranda. However in 1997 interest in a clinically focused program led to a review of the past Peter Mac program and the redevelopment of a Cancer Nursing Certificate at Peter Mac which met eligibility criteria for application of 50 % credit toward post graduate diploma in cancer nursing specialty courses by provider universities. The course was conducted on site for internal and external nurses in the cancer field for several years until a 2002-3 curriculum review created an articulation pathway between the certificate and the diploma courses that ensured the certiciate met subject requirements of the Graduate Diploma Cancer/Palliative Nursing. This program is just one of a number of cancer nursing programs that have evolved throughout Australia.