chemotherapy prescription

[frenchdoc]

hi all,

i am a french resident and i would like to know more about oncology in the USA and Canada. i know that french MD can't work in the USA but there are agreements between Canada and France. My question is about the organisation of oncology over there. In France med onc is a speciality, but they often treat cancers that are not in the field of an organ medical speciality. For instance, pulmonologist treat lung cancer and can prescribe all treatments like conventional chemotherapies or immunotherapies, same for GI, which means that med onc mostly treat breast, prostatic, bladder, sarcoma or ENT cancers, even if they can do all organs, it is the same in the USA and Canada? Can organ specialists treat cancers?
another question is can rad onc prescribe chemotherapies?

thank you

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[gutonc]

In the US, med onc are the "chemo docs" for almost all cancer types.

In academia primarily there are sub-specialty medical oncologists who only treat breast or lung cancer and sometimes even more specialized than that (only pancreatic cancer for example).

There are some old school surgical oncologists who will still prescribe chemo, but that's getting harder to do and nobody comes out of a surgical onc fellowship these days prescribing systemic chemo. Gyn Onc is the exception to the rule, for better or worse. Rad Onc is not trained to prescribe chemotherapy.

 

[frenchdoc]

thanks for your answer, it's very interesting to see what happens in the US because we often follow you with some delay. here rad onc still prescribe chemo when it's concomitant to radiation like capecitabine or temolozomide, they even can prescribe systemic chemo when there are not enough med onc...
concerning rad onc i read on the dedicated forum that they meet the same difficulties as here to find jobs where they want, so i guess it's the same everywhere.
what's cool when choose GI ou pulmonology is endoscopy because it's well paid but on the other hand if you have to renounce to chemo prescription, it's a shame.