Dr Rachel Cooper
Medical Director for Clinical Oncology Education and Training, The Royal College of Radiologists
As treatment innovations transform cancer care, innovations in curriculum design are transforming the training of oncologists.
Clinical and medical oncologists focus on different aspects of cancer care, with clinical oncologists being the sole providers of radiotherapy. The Royal College of Radiologists’ new curriculum for clinical oncology (CO), introduced earlier this year, ensures the next generation of cancer doctors are at the forefront of innovation.
The new curricula for these consultant specialties now include a common year to strengthen clinical overlaps and ensure broad understanding of shared techniques. This is essential as treatment plans using chemotherapy and radiotherapy together are being used more and use of combined therapies requires new ways of working.
The curricula also focus on generalist skills and holistic management, to ensure new consultants can meet the complex needs of our changing, aging patient population.
Managing side effects from novel therapies
New treatments bring hope for better outcomes, but they can also bring new side effects. Patients presenting with complications from novel treatments need early oncology input and stretched A&E services need support managing patients on unfamiliar treatments.
The curricula also focus on generalist skills and holistic management, to ensure new consultants can meet the complex needs of our changing, aging patient population.
Acute oncology services are becoming an essential route to ensuring cancer patients have expert care in an emergency and the new CO curriculum clearly defines the skills trainees need to run, lead and expand acute oncology provision.
Future-proofing training
The rate of advancement in cancer care makes it difficult to predict what practice may look like when our latest CO intake qualifies. Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform treatment planning and genomics is making truly personalised cancer care a possibility. We cannot know exactly how these technologies may be used in the future, but we can ensure trainees have the skills to evaluate and implement new technologies and awareness of new research and tech are key requirements.
The pandemic emphasised the need for flexibility in training and this is built into the new CO curriculum. Instead of being restricted by the granular tick box approaches of the past, the curriculum focuses on high-level abilities and allows trainees to evidence progress in a variety of ways outside of prescriptive assessments – tomorrow’s COs even have innovation and relevance embedded into their assessment cycle.
