Walls, GM, Houlihan, OA, Mooney, C et al. (6 more authors) (2021) Radiation oncology teaching provision and practice prior to and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in medical schools in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland: a cross-sectional survey. The British Journal of Radiology, 94. 20210614. 20210614-. ISSN 0007-1285
Abstract
Objectives:
Radiotherapy is a key cancer treatment modality but is poorly understood by doctors. We sought to evaluate radiation oncology (RO) teaching in medical schools within the United Kingdom (UK) and Republic of Ireland (RoI), as well as any impacts on RO teaching delivery from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Methods:
A bespoke online survey instrument was developed, piloted and distributed to oncology teaching leads at all UK and RoI medical schools. Questions were designed to capture information on the structure, format, content and faculty for RO teaching, as well as both the actual and the predicted short- and long-term impacts of COVID-19.
Results:
Responses were received from 29/41 (71%) UK and 5/6 (83%) RoI medical schools. Pre-clinical and clinical oncology teaching was delivered over a median of 2 weeks (IQR 1–6), although only 9 (27%) of 34 responding medical schools had a standalone RO module. RO teaching was most commonly delivered in clinics or wards (n = 26 and 25 respectively). Few medical schools provided teaching on the biological basis for radiotherapy (n = 11) or the RO career pathway (n = 8), and few provide teaching delivered by non-medical RO multidisciplinary team members. There was evidence of short- and long-term disruption to RO teaching from COVID-19.
Conclusions:
RO teaching in the UK and RoI is limited with minimal coverage of relevant theoretical principles and little exposure to radiotherapy departments and their non-medical team members. The COVID-19 pandemic risks exacerbating trainee doctors’ already constrained exposure to radiotherapy.
Advances in knowledge:
This study provides the first analysis of radiotherapy-related teaching in the UK and RoI, and the first to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on radiationoncology teaching.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. Published by the British Institute of Radiology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 04 Nov 2021 16:33 |
Last Modified: | 04 Nov 2021 16:33 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | British Institute of Radiology |
Identification Number: | 10.1259/bjr.20210614 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:179808 |