They are training caribbean grads and washouts from other residencies. They literally don’t care.
CCF contracted as well I thought. Or at least reduced a spot temporarily which is what I think Anderson did
Too many medical schools, not enough residency spots. So literally med students with no other options will take any open spot so they can complete any type of graduate medical education.
Oh wow one whole spot. That’s like Trump making a spectacle of taking a $1 salary like some magnanimous thought leader.
I posted this on another residency forum. We should encourage anyone who wants to work part time or pursue a non clinical career or just needs to complete any residency without intending on practicing to pursue rad onc. Fill those spots with people who aren’t going to work.
MDACC officially decreased their resident complement by 1 per year via the acgme. Colorado and Cleveland Clinic just said they will take 1 less resident once every four years but technically they are still approved for same number of residents and could fill that spot at any time.
Better than the shameless expansion and weak program creation that's been going on for several years.
Well Tennessee is closing down at the end of this academic year. Texas A and M has 1 resident enrolled currently out of 8 total positions so they might also be preparing to close down as well (I have no info on the program other then that).
Completely agree. Still, I think the right programs are leading by example. If everyone followed suit, that would probably get us really close to that magic number of 100-120 where things were much better back in the day.
If this comes to pass, it will be quite the feces storm won’t it?
Better yet, a urologist who took a weekend course on how to radiate prostates. He has an “advanced” rt- Samantha “you are going to love her according to Ron” Skubish. They can work radiation just fine without a radonc. Maybe someone to review charts once a week. Same for breast.
Well, we are not unique in that regard. How many medical fields could largely be replaced by good AI. It’s science fiction now, but deep learning has the potential to master the medical literature in ways not possible for us. How many internists and generalists will we need to diagnose and manage common diseases? There are a scary number of Gen Zs who would rather talk to an app than a person and would have little to no concern moving from seeing a doctor to a program. Medical oncology…it’s just algorithms and writing orders. Radiology? At some point, computers will be hands down better than people at analyzing every pixel. Ditto for path. I don’t see any/many fields completely going away but I can see future growth plummeting. I’d wager that surgical and procedural specialties are probably the safest…for now.
As long as they can be named in a malpractice suit and carry liability insurance, we should be worried. Until that happens, nope
7-8 a week is a very normal and doable workload imo, esp in the era of sbrt and hypofrac.
This is a potential future for rad onc. ML/AI for contouring and plans. Physics still around for LINAC QA and software maintenance. RTTs still deliver. Surgeon or med onc approves contours/plan -- they are the responsible/liable MD. Rad onc fades away like nuc med.
Makes sense in a country like the UK, where clinical onc already does this. I just don't see the medicolegal climate allowing this to change in the US, personally
Maybe a big university center reviews all the plans?
The DaVinci robot is recording the moves of thousands of surgeons. Imagine having the meta data of how the world’s best surgeons do an operation from millions of cases. What could you possibly do with that? It will happen too.
Precisely why I said…for now. Timescale is different and I think it will be longer before people would accept something artificial cutting them without human direction. But everything is potentially replaceable.
This has always been my main concern and why I'd REALLY caution anyone from this specialty.
These could be avoided by having a radonc/big center review plans for new pts remotely once a week etc
I don't think Canadians want to travel any more than US patients. Their winters are rough!
Some states don't have a single medical school, so we certainly don't need Rad Onc residencies in low population areas or less busy, non-academic training programs.
Single change: If you required that every program have a full time radiobiologist in house, most borderline programs would have to close.
CON helps with this if in a CON state
Doesn't have to be that hard/useless, just require programs to have in-house brachy and peds. That'll do it right there
We’re basically 40 million now
Sounds much more reasonable at 24 for 40 million than what is happening south of the border
The rad onc resident incidence of Texas is in fact significantly higher than that of Canada (p<0.00001). So yes. Much more “reasonable.” Marc Antony (“Julius Caesar”) would say to American rad onc residencies that men have lost their reason. He would say to Texas “y’all are nuts.”
Total population is a bad denominator for these calculations. At a minimum, percentage of population over 65 needs to be considered as cancer incidence starts increasing rapidly in the late 50s and reaches peak incidence rates in early 80s. Other behavioral factors can make a big difference as well. For all the hype about how healthy Utah is...it's the small number of older people there that drives their excellent cancer numbers.
Very fair point. How so many linacs can survive in the sunbelt etc
