The removal of Oncology practices in 6th year

We believe, that this decision should have been announced several months ago, to arrange practices accordingly and inform the hospitals about our educational needs. We currently face a worldwide pandemic, that is still not anywhere close to being over. Many international placements were cancelled, so that we students had to rearrange practices and find new teaching hospitals within a small period of time. These hospitals need us as workforce and partly make us sign a contract in which we agree to support their staff and the assigned ward to the best of our abilities. Considering the current worldwide situation, we are in no position to demand adaptation of our assigned tasks. In addition, some smaller hospitals might not even have oncology wards. In the example of German speaking countries, it is common to have big oncological centers for example for breast cancer, radiation therapy, etc. so that the oncological field is partly outsourced specialised clinical centers. Hence, some teaching hospitals don't have an OBGYN oncology nor an Internal Med oncology. Surgery is the one field that primarily deals with the removal of tumors. Most surgical fields will therefore give insight into the surgical approach of oncologic disease.

However, we understand that acquiring and practicing skills that were taught in Oncology during 4th year are essential for medical doctors. We therefore propose to count the Oncology grade received in 4th year towards the final GPA and diploma average. We also agree that some kind of oncologic practice should be included in the 6th year, but not to the current extent, because students will be forced to rearrange practices. For that, the information came too late. We would like to ask, if you could allow students to get a pick to perform just 1 week of oncologic practices in one of the 3 listed subjects, instead of having to perform all three.

We thank you for the consideration.