Oncologist- Depressing job? - Healthcare Professionals Message Board

littledudesrock · 07-06-2002, 05:06 PM

Is being an oncologist a depressing job?

07-09-2002, 04:46 AM

Yes, unfortunately oncology can be a depressing area to work in, as ultimately you patients are not going to get better and walk out of the ward.

However, it can be very rewarding, as you would be helping patients towards a good, pain free and ultimately peaceful death, whether this be in a hosital, a hospice or at home with their families.

It all depends how you feel as a person and what type of personality you have, as to how you would find working in oncology.

Lindarella · 07-09-2002, 05:42 AM

Oncology is a great job. Contrary to what most believe, patients are cured from cancer all the time. What makes part of it depressing isn't so much that patients die, it's more that for the ones who do die, many of them could have avoided their cancer such as with smokers. Some people have a mistrust of medicine so you don't see them until it's too late or until after they've fell for some miraculous claim for a cure.

You deal with serious issues of life and death every day. It's challenging. Doctors get a bad rap sometimes for bedside manner but I've seen oncologists (and other doctors) who stay at work for days without going home just to help one patient live.

There is nothing as rewarding as when a patient who was very near death walks away cured and you were the one making it happen. The success stories are what keep you going. Curing a child of leukemia or a young mother with breast cancer. It doesn't get any better than that.

rhody · 07-15-2002, 10:21 AM

I would think that both Super Sarah and Lindarella are correct. Being an oncologist could be both rewarding and difficult. Seeing someone cured as a result of your efforts would be wonderful. Seeing patients die and suffer, no matter what is done, I would imagine would be frustrating and sad.

The death rate for cancer patients is much too high. Statistically speaking, the treatment methods today do not give a lot of us high hope. Does anyone have the statistics on the success rates for surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments? I don't think they are very high for aggressive cancers.

Cancer "treatment" starts with prevention. It would be nice to hear *more* about this prevention from the medical community. Cancer rates could be cut down by more than half if people didn't smoke, drink (alcoholic beverages) heavily, ate a healthy diet, and exercised on a regular basis.

To me, I think a more exciting area in medicine to explore as a career choice, would be in cancer research. This would have to be in an area free of the political pressures of a drug company or the government etc. If one could analyze cancer prevention, look at new fresh approaches to cancer treatments, and advertise prevention heavily to reduce cancer rates, that would be best in my opinion.

Just to treat patients with the painful methods that they have today, with a low success rate, would be depressing, I would think. Who would just want to do that? There's a lot better things that a person could do - along the lines of wellness - treating the whole person - and working with the latest cancer treatments. What would be more thrilling in your life, than to make new discoveries, and change the way that things are done today for the better - making millions of people well?