A review of the oncology curriculum at Dalhousie medical school

The teaching of oncology at Dalhousie medical school is currently left to the discretion of the 30 university departments. There is no central coordination. This organization leaves no monitoring of curriculum content to see that what should be covered is indeed covered, nor does it provide teaching from the perspective of oncology rather than the perspective of the other individual disciplines. Following an inventory of the oncology curriculum and a survey of interns graduating from Dalhousie in 1991, we recognize deficiencies in the clinical portion of the curriculum that could be rectified with a small number of hours designed to teach the various aspects of the management of cancer patients in case-scenario, student participation sessions.