{"entity":{"id":"idea-acc-district-surgeon-oncology-mentorship","kind":"idea","name":"Structured mentorship so district general surgeons perform common cancer operations safely","aka":[],"tldr":"Surgery cures more cancers than any other treatment, but most district hospitals refer everything to a distant centre. Train and mentor general surgeons to do common cancer operations well, with specialists checking results.","summary":"Mastectomy, colectomy, gastrectomy, and hysterectomy for cancer are within the technical reach of general surgeons in district hospitals if they are trained in oncological principles (margins, lymph node handling, staging documentation) and mentored through their first cases, with pathology review and outcome audit. Surgical mentorship networks and low-cost simulation exist in general surgery; the oncology-specific layer is missing.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists): Yang et al., Projected supply of and demand for oncologists and radiation oncologists through 2025 (JOP 2014)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1200/JOP.2013.001319"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["breast-hr-positive","colorectal","gastric"],"sections":["surgery"],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-workforce","b-global-access","b-surgery-radiation-innovation"],"keyPapers":["paper-yang-j-oncol-pract"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Mentored district surgeons will achieve margin-negative rates and 30-day morbidity comparable to regional cancer centres for a defined list of operations, while reducing patient travel and waiting time by more than half.","rationale":"The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery and the evidence from surgical task-sharing show that structured supervision maintains quality; cancer surgery volume in LMICs is the largest unfilled cure opportunity.","test":"A prospective audit of 1,000 operations across 20 mentored district hospitals against regional-centre benchmarks, with pathology-verified margins and nodal yield.","maturity":"early-clinical","actor":"clinic","cost":"medium","horizonYears":3},"route":"/ideas/idea-acc-district-surgeon-oncology-mentorship/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"},{"id":"gastric","kind":"cancer","name":"Gastric & gastro-oesophageal junction cancer","route":"/cancers/gastric/"},{"id":"breast-hr-positive","kind":"cancer","name":"HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer","route":"/cancers/breast-hr-positive/"}],"section":[{"id":"surgery","kind":"section","name":"Surgery & Interventional","route":"/fronts/surgery/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-global-access","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Most of the world has almost no cancer care","route":"/bottlenecks/b-global-access/"},{"id":"b-workforce","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists","route":"/bottlenecks/b-workforce/"},{"id":"b-surgery-radiation-innovation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Surgery and radiotherapy cure most, get least","route":"/bottlenecks/b-surgery-radiation-innovation/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-yang-j-oncol-pract","kind":"paper","name":"Projected supply of and demand for oncologists and radiation oncologists through 2025: an aging, better-insured population will result in shortage","route":"/key-papers/paper-yang-j-oncol-pract/"}]}}