Cancer Education in Poland: Current Status and Suggestions for Improvement

In this article, we want to describe the opportunities we experienced though involvement with the AACE and EACE to improve cancer education in poland from our points of view as fifth-year medicine students. By participating in the annual meeting of the EACE that our university (Wroclaw ) hosted and also the ESMI-ESO course on medical oncology for medical students, we were able to improve our doctor- patient skills and deepen our knowledge caring for cancer patients. In our opinion in the obligatory medical curriculum in Poland, the curricular offerings in oncology should be better coordinated and there is too little attention to the teaching of the so called “soft skills” for future doctors. Over the course our studies, we are taught a great deal about the biology, diagnosis and symptomatology of cancer; however, we are not exposed very much to issues of communication between the doctor and the oncology patient, or appropriate strategies to pass information about the diagnosis and prognosis. Therefore, we feel that it is important for the future for students to learn more about such topics. Many do this in informal, extracurricular ways as there is much interest to learn about such topics and we will discuss several useful tools. In this review, we would like to summarize the current state of oncology education in Poland and our hopes for improving the current state and to emphasize how inspiring it was for us to participate in an international cancer education meeting where we could discuss good ideas from all over the world and bring them home to Poland.