Oncology? What exactly is that?!


Question: Oncology? What exactly is that?
I want to be an oncologist, but i'm not exactly sure what it is. Are there different categories to oncology? Like is an oncologist a surgeon or someone who helps patients treat cancer? If there is a difference can you please tell me what the different branches are? Also how many years of school do you need (starting from once you get out of high school)? What is a good school to go to for this major and how much money does an oncologist make? Finally is there a difference between a pediatric oncologist and a regular one (besides the fact that a pediatric oncologist deals with kids)? Thanks so much.

Answers:

Those are a lot of questions! Simply put,

1. What is an oncologist? He/she is a doctor who specializes in treating cancer.

2. Are there different categories to oncology? Yes, there are. There are medical oncologists who give chemotherapy to their patients, and there are surgical oncologists who take out tumors. The reason there are different kinds of oncologists is that there are different kinds of cancers, and some can be cured with drugs, while others can be cured by surgery. Medical and surgical oncologists are further divided into which cancers they specialize in. For example, some surgeons handle mostly breast cancers, while other surgeons treat mostly other kinds of cancers.

3. How many years of school do you need? A whole lot. At the barest minimum, you'll need 4 years of college, another 4 years of med school, and depending on what field you want to specialize in, another 6-10 years of training, which comes out to 14-18 years after high school. It sounds like a lot of work, but you have to realize that there's a lot to know about in medicine in general and cancer in particular. You'll start earning once you start training, though (i.e. after med school).

4. What is a good school for this? Well, that clearly depends on whom you ask and on which kinds of cancer you want to focus. There are universities and institutes that are known for their cancer programs and their cancer research, such as the memorial sloan kettering cancer center and the stanford cancer center.

5. How much money do oncologists make? It depends on where you live and where you work, but a safe estimate is that no US oncologist earns less than $100,000 - $150,000 annually.

6. Is there a difference between a pediatric oncologist and an adult oncologist? Most oncologists can treat both adults and kids if they have a cancer that is in their specialty. For example, hematologist-oncologists (those that deal with blood cancers) can treat both kids and adults with blood cancers (as blood cancers can happen in any age group)

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