Dr Rick McDonough on the Benefits of Being a FLASCO Member

"By being a part of this membership, you get access to education, information, resources, [and] materials that are hopefully going to be helpful in the care of cancer patients," said Rick McDonough, MD, president of the Florida Society of Clinical Oncology (FLASCO).

Transcript:What are the benefits of being a FLASCO member?

So, in talking about education and inclusiveness, the ability to connect to your peers and people in different disciplines that touch on cancer care [is vital]—collaboration is, I think, one of the key things in medical care. So, whether that’s on the small level of within an office of the team of people that are day by day helping you take care of cancer and blood cancer patients, or whether that is across the broader spectrum–whether that’s a group or a hospital system, whether that’s an academic medical center that you have a large group of people who are focused on the mission of that entity.

And so then, we’ve really sought to expand that further across the state so that we can bring together people from different geographies within the state, different settings and the way that they care for cancer patients, whether that’s a single doctor in a practice and their staff or whether that’s large institutions, whether that’s academic or even private practices that are large and spread across large areas of the state. So, by being a part of this membership, you get access to education, information, resources, [and] materials that are hopefully going to be helpful in the care of cancer patients, [and] make sure that in making those connections, the more that we all collaborate, the better that [we] can become.

And beyond that, listening to, for example, one of the fellows who was present for last night’s discussion, it was really eye opening particularly for people that are new in their career to be able to say, ‘This is information that I need to know,’ beyond just the scientific and the medical aspects of their training so that they can sort of understand more of the big picture of what’s involved and as this gets more and more complicated—and currently in oncology change is so rapid in both the science and the mechanism of how we deliver care–that we can be able to collaborate to make those advances and continue to move this forward.