Evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on medical oncology workforce and cancer care in Canada: A serial survey study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The first case of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2, C19) was reported to Health Canada on Jan 25th, 2020 By March 18th, states of emergency were declared across multiple provinces The pandemic has presentedprofessional and personal challenges for the medical oncology workforce and cancer care Under the auspices ofthe Canadian Association of Medical Oncology (CAMO), we sought to examine the temporal effects of C19 onmedical oncologists and care practices across Canada Methods: Two serial multiple-choice, web-based national surveys were conducted in 2020from March 30th toApril 4th (S1) and May 6th to May 15 , 2020 (S2) The surveys were distributed by email to medical oncologistsidentified through CAMO and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Medical Oncology directory (n=618) Participation was voluntary with no compensation Descriptive analyses with frequency distributions are reported Results: A total of 157 completed responses were received for S1 and 159 responses for S2 (25% response rate) Demographics were similar between S1/S2: from comprehensive cancer centre (87%/86%), greater than 15 years inpractice (41%/46%), CAMO member (60%/65%) Moderate to extreme concern of C19 exposure decreased overtime for self (79%/54%), for family (82%/65%), and for patient (pt) (71%/54%) Routine use of PPE increased(67%/100%) with less concern around PPE access (69%/28%) Frequent anxiety (54%/32%) and depression(19%/14%) lessened while frequent lack of interest (18%/17%) and lack of focus (33%/31%) were unchanged Useof telemedicine for >50% of pts remained high (82%/86%), and confidence in adequate health care access for ptsincreased (39%/59%) Centre accrual activity to clinical trials increased (46%/67%) Change in chemotherapy for>20% of pts was reported infrequently (33%/23%) Cancer prognosis and treatment benefit remained the primarydeterminant in treatment decision-making (rank score: 7 50/7 95) while resource access (6 19/5 68) and pt risk ofC19 (6 05/5 72) became less important Conclusions: As the pandemic curve flattens and Canadian medical oncologists adjust to a new normal, positivetrends can be observed in concerns around C19 exposure, frequency of anxiety and depression, concerns aboutPPE access, confidence in health care access, and accrual to clinical trials Chemotherapy plans remainedunchanged for the majority of pts A high rate of early adoption of telemedicine was observed and maintained Serialfollow-up is valuable to understand changing perceptions and practices
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".