Shaping the future: training of professionals for radiotherapy in Europe

Abstract

Enormous progress has been witnessed in the field of radiotherapy over the last years, and there is nothing to suggest that this dynamic development will come to a halt in the foreseeable future. Clinical science is changing rapidly from a ‘school-centered’ to an evidence based approach, which is indicated by an increasing number of well designed prospective clinical trials and by systematic reviews using state-of-the-art methodology [1,3,5,9,11,15,18,20,22,27,30, 34,37]. Rapid scientific advances in medical physics lead to new technologies for treatment planning and application for clinical practice [4,7,8,12,14,17,23,26,28,33,35,36,40]. Unprecedented scientific developments are seen in the field of biology and biotechnology [2,6,10,19,21,31,32,38, 39] which will dramatically change our understanding of malignant disease and our approach to cancer treatment. It is one of the most important challenges for the future to integrate these novel developments into optimised radiotherapy strategies. For such translational research efforts, close cooperation of radiotherapists, medical physicists, biologists, radiotherapy technologists and other professionals in multidisciplinary teams is a key for success [29]. The continuously increasing complexity of state-ofthe-art cancer treatment and progress in other fields of oncology require modern health care management structures that provide a framework for interdisciplinary patientand disease centred teams. State of the art basic education and training of professionals and life long continuous professional education is of central importance for delivery of optimum quality of care to cancer patients as well as for continuous scientific and technological progress in radiation oncology. The mainstay of postgraduate training of professionals in the field of radiotherapy are the teaching departments. This practical and theoretical training is supplemented by formal teaching activities provided by scientific societies and professional bodies on a regional, national, and international level [24,25]. Throughout its history the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) has seen it as a most important task to provide high quality teaching activities to its members. The most prominent examples are the modular basic and advanced teaching courses and the pre-conference workshops. More than a thousand participants attend these courses each year. Besides providing excellent overviews of the state-of-the-art, these teaching activities add a European dimension to training and continuous medical education in the field of radiotherapy. European law gives every citizen the right to exercise his or her profession throughout the Union. Large efforts have been made by the European Commission to harmonise national legislations, as to make specialist accreditation from one country to another has been made possible [13]. Based on this right of mobility, more and more professionals are prepared to work in countries, where they have not been educated. This requires the comparability of training levels throughout Europe and mutual trust in the education and training provided by other Member States. The European scientific societies and professional bodies play a major role in this process by developing guidelines for harmonised European standards of professional training. As early as in 1991 the ESTRO developed a ‘Minimum Curriculum for the Theoretical Education in Radiation Oncology in Europe’ [25]. This core curriculum was a great success and played a pivotal role in establishing comparable standards for training in radiotherapy all over Europe. More than 10 years later, it became not only important to update this document but also to proceed on the way to harmonisation of training for all professional groups in the field of radiotherapy in Europe. To achieve this aim, several committees within ESTRO, the European Board for Radiotherapy (EBR), the radiotherapy chapter of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS), the European Federation of Medical Physicists (EFOMP), and other European bodies, societies and groups involved in education in the field of radiotherapy have worked intensively together over the past three years to provide a coherent set of