How to increase haematologists’ and oncologists’ confidence with new treatments

A new whitepaper from Medscape highlights the difficulties haematologists and oncologists face in keeping up with rapid developments in treatment. We speak to the company’s Katie Lucero and Victoria Harvey-Jones to find out how independent medical education is changing to help HCPs increase their confidence in treating cancer patients.

It’s an exciting time to be a haematologist/oncologist, with new clinical data emerging and new drugs being approved at a stunning pace. But this comes at a price – physicians sometimes struggle to keep pace with the mountains of data, and the resulting implications for clinical practice and the patient sitting in front of them.

Decision making is becoming particularly difficult for haematologists/oncologists in the community setting – who treat more than 50% of all cancer patients in Europe. Community haematologists/oncologists can also see patients who present with every type of solid tumour, as well as haematological malignancies.

A Medscape confidence-based assessment of European Union haematologists/oncologists found that, when selecting from eight different treatment choices for a patient with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, only 43% of them were confident in their choice, at best (see figure 1).

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