Oncologists still good internists?

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Que

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The other day I when I was with a cardiologist, he mentioned that he only "deals" with cardio stuff and considers himself fairly inept when handling anything that ventures outside of the CV system. I mean obviously he trained in IM and this isn't completely true, but he has been out for awhile, so it's not too surprising. Is this sort of attitude common in Oncology as well? I would think Oncologists would have to be very competent internists in order to be good at their job, perhaps more than a cardiologist or gastroenterologist would, for example. The reason I'm asking is while I am really interested in oncology, I also really don't want to lose out on a lot of my IM knowledge. I would consider that a huge turn off for entering any field. What do you guys think?

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Some are, some are not. Be the kind of physician you want to be.

I focus my limited extra time on keeping up to date in my sub-specialty so I don't have much time to follow new HTN guidelines or the latest COPD management recommendations.
 
Some are, some are not. Be the kind of physician you want to be.

I focus my limited extra time on keeping up to date in my sub-specialty so I don't have much time to follow new HTN guidelines or the latest COPD management recommendations.

Thanks for the response. I understand not wanting to use up your time to stay up to date with guidelines. I guess my question is more regarding whether or not you USE your general IM, multisystem knowledge as an oncologist more than my cardiologist example. It seems to me that this would be the case since there is no "system" in oncology, as cancer can affect any system.
 
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Well that's a different question now, isn't it? Yes, of course I use my general IM knowledge:
Cardiovascular: Good for moving the chemo around
Renal: Gets in the way of giving all the chemo I want to give
Hepatobiliary: See Renal, also, a great place to catch mets
Skin: Drug-related toxicity detector
Etc, etc, etc.
 
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The other day I when I was with a cardiologist, he mentioned that he only "deals" with cardio stuff and considers himself fairly inept when handling anything that ventures outside of the CV system. I mean obviously he trained in IM and this isn't completely true, but he has been out for awhile, so it's not too surprising. Is this sort of attitude common in Oncology as well? I would think Oncologists would have to be very competent internists in order to be good at their job, perhaps more than a cardiologist or gastroenterologist would, for example. The reason I'm asking is while I am really interested in oncology, I also really don't want to lose out on a lot of my IM knowledge. I would consider that a huge turn off for entering any field. What do you guys think?

I haven't gotten good exposure to adult heme/onc, but on the peds side, everyone I worked with seemed competent from a general pediatrics standpoint and, I believe, served as the patient's primary care during induction and consolidation.
 
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