A Critical Appraisal and Targeted Intervention of the Oncology Experience in an Internal Medicine Residency Ghulam Rehman Mohyuddin 1 & Anthony Dominick 1 & Travis Black 2 & Marc Hoffman 3 & Heather Male 3 & Kenneth Byrd 3 & Brian McClune 3 & Leigh Eck 4 & Prakash Neupane 5 # American Association for Cancer Education 2020 Abstract Most oncology education is provided to residents on an inpatient oncology service, with limited outpatient exposure. There exists considerable need to develop effective education strategies to teach resident physicians basic concepts in oncology. We created a 2-hour small-group interactive workshop, using interactive cases, followed by a number of questions regarding curability, survival, and possible treatment options. All residents were asked to fill out optional questionnaires before and after this workshop. A total of 64 residents participated in this study with an average of 16 residents per session. Significant deficits in knowledge were identified, and prognosis was estimated correctly by 40% of residents when presented with a variety of clinical scenarios. We demonstrated an increase in comfort level in basic oncology concerns, comfort level at estimating prognosis, and managing toxicity based on pre- and post-level testing. Our results confirm that the oncology inpatient rotation may not be adequate in educating residents. The format of our workshop demonstrates that it is possible to create and implement a focused intervention with fairly limited resources. This can serve as a platform for evaluation of oncology medical education of internal medicine residents at other institutions. Keywords Medical education . Oncology . Internal medicine . Didactics . Workshop . Poll Introduction Program directors and house staff have identified oncology as the least adequately taught internal medicine subspecialty [1]. Most education is provided to residents on an inpatient oncol- ogy service, and resident work is limited to dealing with se- vere complications of cancer treatment, arranging outpatient follow-up appointments, or in caring for those who are criti- cally ill or at the end of life [2]. Resident physicians lack exposure to meaningful discussions regarding goals of treat- ment and longitudinal outpatient assessments [2]. Such inpa- tient rotations have been shown to lead to a decreased interest in oncology [3]. Due to lack of exposure and heterogeneity among diseases, advanced malignancies, are often perceived by residents as having a poor prognosis regardless of the specific disease type [4]. Reversing these misconceptions is essential as primary care physicians play an essential role in the management of co-morbid conditions, goals of care discussions, and hospice referrals [5]. We identified a significant lack of exposure and deficit in oncology education at our institution, based on interactions of fellows and faculty with residents. As previous research had shown improved prognostication skills in internal medicine residents that had received focused lectures on prognosis and outcomes of common cancers, compared with a standard American Board of Internal Medicine oncology review lecture Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01766-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ghulam Rehman Mohyuddin gmohy-ud-din@kumc.edu 1 Hematology Oncology Fellow, Department of Internal Medicine, Kansas University Medical Center, Suite 210, 2330 Shawnee Mission Pkwy, Westwood, Kansas 66205, USA 2 Temple-Fox School of Business and Management, Philadelphia, PA, USA 3 Division of Hematologic Malignancies and Cellular Therapeutic, Department of Internal Medicine, Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA 4 Department of Internal Medicine, Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA 5 Department of Medical-Oncology, Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA Journal of Cancer Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01766-6