Promoting Reasonable Career Expectations and Maximizing Professional Fulfillment for Academic Oncologists: ASCO Recommendations for Academic Medical Centers

Abstract

In this statement, ASCO encourages academic medical centers to change their policies and expectations to enhance and promote the professional fulfillment of academic medical oncologists. The statement includes three recommendations directed to academic medical centers to further this goal: (1) establish reasonable clinical workloads for academic medical oncologists, (2) provide resources to enable medical oncologists to participate in and conduct research, and (3) develop and apply their standards for clinical workloads and research support, as well as career advancement and leadership opportunities, fairly and equitably across academic medical oncologists. Overall, improved career satisfaction is likely to result in retention of oncologists in the workforce. This is critical to support high-quality patient care, educate the next generation of cancer-focused professionals, and accelerate research discovering effective strategies for cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.