M. Ch Oncology is a branch of surgery that focuses on the surgical management of Cancer. M. Ch in Oncology is offered as a three-year residential course in medical colleges in India and candidates selected for this course are offered with stipend during their course of study.

This course is offered only by a few medical colleges in India that are approved by the Medical Council of India and the names of government colleges offering this course in India are given below:

Andhra Pradesh:

• Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad

Kerala:

• Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram

Eligibility requirement:

For seeking admission to the M. Ch in Oncology course, candidates must have completed their MBBS from an institution approved by the Medical Council of India and after completion of MBBS with internship, they must have MD/MS in appropriate discipline or DNB of National Board of Examinations.

Admission procedure:

Admission of students to the M. Ch in Oncology course is done based on the performance of the students in the all-India or state-level examination as per the approval of Medical Council of India or appropriate state medical councils.

Job description of oncologists:

Candidates who have completed their M. Ch in oncology are called as Oncologists and they are physicians, who treat deformities, injuries and diseases by non-invasive, minimally-invasive or invasive surgical methods like manual manipulation, usage of appliances and instruments. Their job falls under larger career category of surgeons.

What does Oncologists do?

They are surgical professionals and so their main work is conducting surgeries on patients for correction of deformities, repairing of injuries and to improve the well-being of the patients’ after successful completion of surgery. Even though, this is their main task, they will have to perform several other pre-operative and post-operative procedures in patients and they should analyze whether a surgery is really needed for a particular patient. Some of the pre-operative functions to be performed by them are:

• The initial work of an Oncologist to whom a patient comes through the reference of his/her family physician is to analyze whether the patient needs surgery to treat his/her condition or whether medicines alone can treat them

• Analyzing the medical history of the patients to find whether the patient is allergic to any medicines

• Analyzing the surgical risk (if any) in patients

• Once it has been decided that surgery is highly essential, they will have to instruct the nursing assistants about preoperative procedures like antibiotics, diets, sedatives and preparation of patient to the operation

Once the patient is ready for the operation, they should perform the operation carefully and should help the patient to come out of the problem the face. After successful completion of surgery, they will have to instruct about the post-operative procedures to be followed on the patient to protect him/her from any post-operative infections.

Thus, Oncologist play a crucial role like other medical professionals in saving the life of the patients and therefore these professionals are in great demand all over the world to treat patients with cancer and related issues.