An 18-month oncology track for clinical officers and physician associates
Training a specialist doctor takes ten years or more. Mid-level clinicians can be trained in eighteen months to run protocol-based cancer care under supervision, and there are far more of them.
Clinical officers, physician associates, and medical officers deliver most frontline care in many LMICs. A defined oncology curriculum (staging, protocol chemotherapy, toxicity management, palliative care, referral criteria) with competency assessment and a legal scope of practice would create a cadre far faster than specialist training. Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania have run smaller versions. The proposal is a regionally recognised qualification with a shared curriculum and examination.
- Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists · The number of people with cancer is rising faster than the workforce trained to treat them.
- Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.
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