Questions and data from the students questionnaire

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

It is not necessary for you to fill in your name and address.
However, if you do, we will send you (in the course of 1992) a summary of the report about the survey.
Name: ................
Address: ....................

Summary of the report about the survey for Student Respondents - 1992

This is a short communication concerning the Second WHO/UICC Survey on Undergraduate Medical Cancer Education in Europe for student-respondents who indicated their wish to receive a summary of the results. The purpose of the survey was to identify centres of activity with respect to undergraduate cancer education in Europe.

Method

The student-questionnaire was developed after consulting several medical and education experts, and was tested with a pilot group of medical students in Groningen. Participation was sought by requesting deans of European medical schools to appoint a representative in their school who would be willing to distribute the questionnaire among 5-10 students who were about to graduate as a medical doctor. This resulted in 383 processable responses from students who would graduate within 9 months. The students represent 93 medical schools in 27 European countries.

Results

The number of cancer patients that students see during their medical training varies considerably. Some students encounter about 25 cancer patients during medical education, other students see up to 500 cancer patients. Breast cancer and lung cancer are most often seen, while malignant tumours of the vulva and the thyroid are among the rare encounters. Patients with melanoma are somewhere in between. The final question in the questionnaire was: What three things would you suggest could be done that would improve cancer education at your medical school? The top-three items were:

1. more psychosocial topics
2. see more patients, more bedside teaching
3. better teachers, teacher training.

Immediately following item 3 the students mentioned: more cancer patients, more bedside teaching.

Discussion

Student-encounters with cancer patient have been advocated for different reasons. Whether such encounters really take place, depends on opportunities, on teacher policies and on student initiatives. Our results from the survey show that opportunities are unequally distributed among medical schools. This explains at least partly the rather low average number of cancer patients seen by medical students. But on the other hand we found within one school differences between individual students, which may reflect teacher policies and/or student initiatives.

These results lead to questions like:

• Is it acceptable that students graduate as a medical doctor without ever having seen a patient with a thyroid cancer?
• Is it acceptable that they have seen on average only one new patient with testicular cancer?
• Is the modest position of melanoma compared with the high position of lung cancer a reasonable and/or acceptable result?

These and other questions will be topics of discussion in international meetings of the World Health Organization, the Union Internationale Contre le Cancer, the European Association for Cancer Education, and the like.