[Reforming Work Styles in Cancer Care-Approaches to Task Shifting/Task Sharing and Key Considerations]

Cancer care requires an extremely wide range of specialized activities, including cancer diagnosis, multimodal treatment, supportive therapy, holistic palliative care, and long-term follow-up after treatment, etc. In other words, cancer care is a field that demands the collaboration of multiple professions to provide comprehensive care tailored to each individual patient. At the same time, since cancer care becomes more sophisticated, advanced and complex, healthcare professionals are required to improve their expertise and master the latest medical technologies. Consequently, the burden on healthcare providers involved in cancer care is rapidly increasing, and task shifting/sharing has been emphasized to make effective utilization of limited human and social resources. Task shifting/sharing refers to the transfer or sharing of tasks under the consensus of healthcare professionals. Specifically, it aims to improve the efficiency and quality of work by transferring or sharing specific medical practices or tasks to other medical professions. This paper will focus on reforming the work styles of "physicians," but will also consider reforming the work styles of all healthcare professionals, and will outline task shifting/sharing as the core of such measures.