I am a clinical oncologist in the UK. We do the US equivalent of an intern year, then three years of internal medicine, then five years of oncology, with or without a further 2-3 years of a research degree according to interest (technical RT, lab, running clinicL studies). It depends on the centre, and certainly in London the tendency is for us increasingly to act as rad oncs, but in much of the UK we provide a complete non-surgical service, ie radical RT, palliative RT and all systemic therapies. My belief is that this model works well, especially in diseases like metastatic breast cancer where understanding how to integrate treatments often gives the patient a better experience. I think that understanding the natural history of the disease is more important than focussing on the modality (and let's face it, RT is harder than most chemotherapy). We have medoncs too; they do four years of fellowship after IM and are often more research oriented.
