Diagnosis and healthcare professional education
Our supporters told us that one of the biggest issues they faced in getting diagnosed was that their symptoms were not recognised by healthcare professionals as being potentially cancerous.
According to the National Sarcoma Survey 2020, around a third of respondents (30%) took more than 6 months after their first appointment to receive an accurate diagnosis, with 17% waiting more than a year.
Problems with medical student awareness
Medical students are the doctors of the future, and will be crucial in diagnosis sarcomas sooner.
However, medical students get little training on rare cancers, and even less teaching on sarcoma. Without this knowledge, it is unlikely that they will be able to recognise the signs and symptoms of sarcoma in the future.
What are we doing?
In our report, Delays Cost Lives, we called for all formal medical training programmes to include awareness of rare cancers, across all specialities.
We are working in collaboration with the Bone Cancer Research Trust to understand how medical students like to learn independently, and to then create and disseminate education resources aimed at medical students. We hope this will ultimately improvement the next generation of healthcare professional’s knowledge and understanding of sarcoma.
“If it can be fed into the medical schools that would be great, because education and awareness in our experience was totally lacking.”
– carer speaking of late father’s experience
“If it can be fed into the medical schools that would be great, because education and awareness in our experience was totally lacking.”
– carer speaking of late father’s experience
