IntroductionAt the end of FY2017, all the full-time radiation oncologists in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Kanagawa Cancer Center retired. Although the mass retirement of physicians is often a social problem, the clinical and/or research performance status of a department after such a mass retirement is unclear. Five years have passed since the mass retirement in FY2017 in this center. Thus, this study retrospectively analyzed the clinical and research performance in the radiation oncology department.
Materials and methodsThe number of full-time radiation oncologists, actual number of patients receiving radio-therapy, number of conference presentations, and number of publications in English from FY2013 to FY2022 were investigated using the department database and the Kanagawa Cancer Center Annual Report. Differences between the 5-year period from FY2013 to FY2017 (before the mass retirement) and the 5-year period from FY2018 to FY2022 (after the mass retirement) were compared using the Mann-Whitney U-test.
ResultsThe mean [95% confidence interval (CI)] numbers of full-time radiation oncologists before and after the mass retirement were 5.2 (3.16-7.24) and 6.6 (4.03-7.17), respectively, with no significant difference (p=0.1351). The mean (95% CI) overall actual numbers of patients before and after mass retirement were 1063.4 (847.4-1279.3) and 1656.2 (1330.7-1981.7), respectively. The number of patients significantly increased after the mass retirement (p=0.0163). No significant differences in the number of conference presentations or publi-cations were observed.
ConclusionsThis study investigated and compared the clinical and research performance of the radiation oncology department before and after the mass retirement. Although the number of full-time radiation oncologists and research results were not significantly different, the number of actual patients increased significantly after the mass retirement.
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