Background:
Undergraduate Medical Education is a vital step to create good physicians. It is important that students learn oncology in an ideal approach. In Iraq, a war-torn country, there is no consensus on what and how much oncology should be learned at this level.
Aim:
This abstract tries to explore the initiative experience that was accomplished in May 2014 at Tikrit University – College Of Medicine.
Methods:
10 lectures (50 minutes each) given in a condensed course along two days during the last month of 4th grade students. Topics as follows: 1. Oncology: Introductions; 2. Cancer awareness, prevention & early detection; 3. Patients’ rights, ethics & communication skills in oncology; 4. Cancer patients’ care: global and local perspectives; 5. Surgical oncology: at glance; 6. Radiation oncology: at glance; 7. Adult & Pediatric Medical oncology: at glance; 8. Nursing oncology: at glance; 9. Palliative and supportive oncology: at glance; 10. Integrated oncology and comprehensive cancer care: at glance. Pre-Course Survey (Pre) “composed of 14 questions” and Post-course survey (Post) “composed of 9 questions” were spread, collected and analyzed.
Results:
Students were 39 & Male/Female ratio was 1.4/1. From Pre, 17% chosen oncology as a career in the future and 54% did not agree that their current oncology hours are ideal. From Post, 51% mentioned that the curriculum hours ideally should be ranged from 8-25 hours/annum and 84% agreed that setting a standard of oncology objectives, curriculum, and reference resources will be useful and 49% agreed to attend a voluntary summer oncology school course.
Conclusions:
As a career, oncology seems to be the choice in a minority of students. There is a trend that under-graduate oncology education is not ideal and this needs to be addressed in further studies in order to improve the status of this field and its involvement in conquering cancer.