Emma Davies, a doctor working within the field of surgical oncology and Cancer Researcher, found herself thrust into the unenviable position of carer for her partner who had been diagnosed with an aggressive stage IV cancer. While always having more than a passing interest in a wider view of healthcare, this development pushed her to take a deep dive into the wealth of resources within Integrative Medicine available to help her wife in these extremely difficult circumstances. What she found has made a world of difference to them both: “This has all of the evidence behind it, it’s all positive things, it has no detrimental effects to her health, improved her quality of life… all people need to know about this.”
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Robin Daly Hello and welcome to the second series of CancerTalk, the podcast that explores the Benefits of integrative oncology an Approach that brings together Standard oncology practice.
Robin Daly For the raft of lifestyle and complementary approaches in order to provide broader, more holistic care to improve quality of life and outcomes for people with cancer, I’m Robin Daly, founder of Yes to Life, the UK’s integrative Cancer care charity. I’m one of the hosts for the podcast. Series 1 of Cancer Talk was aimed at initiating conversations about integrative oncology and bridging the gap between mainstream and integrative medicine practitioners. And the Series 1 episodes are still available from YES to life.org.uk/podcasts and major podcast platforms.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Hello, I’m Dr Penny Kechagioglou. I’m an NHS clinical oncologist and Co host for the podcast. And in addition to treating patients with all the regular modalities in use within healthcare, I have a passion for integrating evidence supported lifestyle and complementary medicine into patient protocols.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou I witnessed first hand the enormous benefits this can deliver to patients and their carers. So in series two of the podcast, we are planning focus conversations with healthcare professionals, working directly with people with cancer and applying integrative oncology in contemporary clinical practice with the aim of strengthening the clinical voice and evidence for integration, influencing the wider community, including academia and research, and building the case for an integrated UK model of care.
Robin Daly First podcast of 2024.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Hi Robin, it’s fantastic. Good to be back in 2024 with new podcasts episodes.
Robin Daly Yeah, we’ve got some great plans for guests this year, starting today with a highly experienced surgical oncologist and oncology researcher. Do you want to introduce your colleague?
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Absolutely. We’ve got the fantastic Emma Davis, who is a surgeon by background and we met some last year in the Integrative Medicine conference. And I know that Emma is training now to become AGP and she’s also an integrative medicine practitioner working at the Synthesis Clinic. So we’ve got a lot to talk about.
Dr Emma Davies Thank you very much for having me. I feel very honoured, especially to be the 1st of 2024. So thank you.
Robin Daly Excellent. So you seem to have got this very solid background in medicine, both as a clinician researcher, So you’re heading off to be a GP. And So what got you into this whole thing? Why have you drawn to medicine?
Dr Emma Davies It’s interesting because I was thinking about this myself before coming on the podcast and I think there’s so many things. It’s been a huge journey so and you know, during into medicine in general when I was younger, I was fascinated by the human body, really interested in how it works.
Dr Emma Davies I haven’t, you know, what made things tick and always, you know, biology was one of my favourite subjects and then loved talking to people as well and also problem solving. So putting it all together, ended up in Med school, which was fantastic.
Dr Emma Davies Had a had a great time and it was really interesting and yeah. And so that’s kind of how I got into medicine. And yeah, you’ve drifted across towards oncology, which is obviously it’s not everybody’s a cup of tea.
Robin Daly It’s very demanding. But you seem to have a, a leaning towards a do you know why? Is there a particular reason?
Dr Emma Davies Yeah. So I actually always from starting medicine, I always wanted to be a surgeon and from kind of Med school and going throughout Med school and I just loved every aspect of it and of the, the kind of manual dexterity part of it, the rapid decisions.
Dr Emma Davies And you know, you have to be very the, the rapid decisions also have to be extremely thought through at the same time. Also, I liked the the people in the in the specialty as well. And I just kind of always knew that I wanted to do surgery.
Dr Emma Davies And then so I finished Med school and did my foundation training, then did my course surgical training. And then during my course surgical training, I worked in the Marsden as just path of rotation and absolutely loved it.
Dr Emma Davies I did six months there and I did some kind of upper GI surgical oncology and I did some sarcoma, Melanoma surgical oncology as well. So I had a bit, bit of two different kind of types of surgical oncology within that placement.
Dr Emma Davies And then during that placement, my boss at the time said we’d love to have you do some research with us if you don’t want to go straight into registrar training. And at that point I was choosing between general surgery and plastic surgery.
Dr Emma Davies So I hadn’t yet applied for my registered training. And so I was going to have to take a year out anyway to make that decision. So I thought this is an absolutely fantastic opportunity. I’ve loved working here and it will, you know, in terms of my research background was I done some research in terms of Oh dear and some quality improvement and things like that.
Dr Emma Davies But in terms of actual scientific research wasn’t yet a strength on my phony or CV and was really interested in it, but not fine. And so I started, I embarked on a PhD in the Institute of Council Research and then, but it’s affiliated with the Royal Marston as well.
Dr Emma Davies So during that time I did a combination of wet lab work and also I ran clinical trial in the Royal Martin as well. So alongside my, my consultant and yeah. And so that was kind of my surgical and like leading up to my surgical and academic background with the thought to do general surgery, complete my PhD and then carry on and do registrar training.
Dr Emma Davies However, so a few things along the way, both professionally and also personally have as put everyone’s life not gone 100% on track. And my my wife got diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer almost two years ago now, whilst I was basically in the final stages of starting to write my thesis.
Dr Emma Davies And so that then was a giant shock it we at that point in time we had a 4 1/2 month old baby. And so I kind of had to stop everything and start embarking on the cancer journey with as a family and from the from the patient side rather than the clinician side.
Dr Emma Davies And so that kind of in terms of focusing on interpretive oncology, that was definitely the starting. It’s one of the starting points to really delving into the specialty. Just a few little things of note before then whilst I was, so I did a, as part of my medical training, I did an integrated BSE and that was in nutrition.
Dr Emma Davies So I’d always had an interest in nutrition in in general. And so that was kind of, I was always interested in it. And then during my training there wasn’t, you know, in terms of your generic training, there’s not really much teaching or teaching on kind of the use of nutrition within conventional medicine.
Dr Emma Davies But I had one patient on the trial ask me about the ketone diet, keto diet. And Eileen was a bit like I’m this is before kind of all my journey into executive oncology and I and I was just working in conventional medicine and I don’t know, I didn’t want to say it had no effect because I didn’t know if it had an effect or not, but I will.
Dr Emma Davies I knew was that I didn’t know. So then that opened a huge world of integrative oncology principles in general. You know, I went down this rabbit hole of papers and research and kind of publications of diet impact and that was just diet at that time, you know, diet backed on on cancers.
Dr Emma Davies And so that kind of that was kind of a trigger for me was in my, my wife’s sister is a natural bath. So and she trained in in Australia. So because I don’t think they have such an equivalent degree here, but I know it’s very big and very renowned and well learned in Australia.
Dr Emma Davies And over the years we’d have conversations about kind of herbal medicine and she did pre Med and so she was extremely experienced. But then it was, it was fascinating to hear just in terms of getting this exposure from different types of I guess medical practitioners that I guess I hadn’t had this exposure to before.
Dr Emma Davies And it was just really interesting to not only have this conversation that I’d go away and research them and be like, this is interesting. I’ve how have I not heard of any of this before? The kind of background, I think key things that stick into my mind in terms of how I got into the integrative oncology specialty role, that was kind of those two things.
Dr Emma Davies And then, and then we had the devastating news that she had stage 4 bowel cancer. And, and at that point, obviously our whole world just collapsed. And we kind of we’re in a situation that we never thought we’d be in, in our in our 30’s, the newborn baby.
Dr Emma Davies And so we went to the oncologist and had the conversations and kind of unfortunately, so she has bowel cancer. That’s spreads to the liver, but it’s in every low. So she wasn’t surgically researchable.
Dr Emma Davies And therefore kind of the options that were discussed to us, what discussed with us were kind of let’s try some chemotherapy and see if that can reduce the lesions to at least get some curative surgery.
Dr Emma Davies And unfortunately, so she did three months of chemotherapy and and they they didn’t, they hadn’t reduced enough any form of search for even kind of extreme surgical options. So in the meantime I started kind of doing research into a specific type of lung cancer.
Dr Emma Davies She has a pre ref mutation MSS with isolated liver Mets. And I kind of went down that research route and looking to see kind of conventional therapies. And then I kind of thought, you know what, like there’s, this is amazing and we’re going to completely work with the oncologist.
Dr Emma Davies And it’s amazing that there are all these options out there. But there has to be more like and there has to be more that we can do actively that isn’t just being prescribed to us. And I say us because we very much felt like it was an OWL diagnosis, particularly in the beginning.
Dr Emma Davies And that’s when I kind of really started building up my evidence base really of all different types of modalities within integrative oncology. You know, there’s so much in the toolkit that’s available to you.
Dr Emma Davies And you know, we did ask, I, I didn’t know what the answers were going to be in terms of should we try this? Should we not try this? And I kind of knew what the answers were going to be, yet we kind of still pushed on and took the approach.
Dr Emma Davies And I mean, she’s doing, she’s doing amazingly. So. And you know, our oncologist, you’re better than an enigma to to my wife. And so then I was like, OK, well, this has all of the evidence behind it.
Dr Emma Davies It’s all positive things. You know, it’s not. It had no detrimental effect to her health, improved her quality of life. She is currently the pet shows no metabolic activity, which has been the same for almost two years.
Dr Emma Davies And we’re kind of living our lives as best we can in between chemotherapy. She’s still having ongoing chemotherapy every every other week that we’ve kind of managed to slowly wean down to a slightly longer schedule and as in longer time in between sessions and also a reduced of so that it’s it’s livable.
Dr Emma Davies But and so then I thought all people need to know about this. And I was like, this is N of one. I’m going to get more than that. And so and then I started looking at kind of who was in the field and you know, I knew I’d done a lot of research on it and I know that it’s very big in America.
Dr Emma Davies And I was like, but but who’s in the field within the UK? And then I came across the BSIO and Doctor Penny and Doctor Nina. Now it’s like I need to meet these two women. And just by, well, I knew that they were speaking in, in the IPM Congress and I thought I need to go and introduce myself because I’m part of the movement with you guys and I have a huge passion for it from a both a personal and professional stance because they can see what difference it makes.
Dr Emma Davies And yeah. And that’s kind of how I, I landed where I am. And then in terms of kind of the, the, the GP side of things, since my wife got a diagnosis, it just wasn’t feasible anymore to do any night shifts or because we have a now 2 year old, but at the time a baby.
Dr Emma Davies And, and at the beginning, my wife was very, very sick. So it was very difficult to juggle doing anything with a baby and an unwell wife. And I kind of, and I thought, you know, what’s the and at this point, I really was, I’d found my passion because my passion is absolutely interpretive oncology.
Dr Emma Davies I loved doing surgery and I’m, you know, there are elements I miss, but within this whole journey, I actually realized that my passion is interpretive oncology. So I was like, if that is the case, how can I get there as well?
Dr Emma Davies I can’t. I’ve still got so much time as a surgical trainee. You know, I’ve done my entrance exams. I was, I don’t know, a surgical registrar for the time that I was doing my, my PhD, but I still had kind of five years left of that.
Dr Emma Davies And also it would be very arduous, long hours that I just unfortunately likewise wouldn’t be able to, to maintain. And then I kind of I thought that doing general practice would be a great way into getting back into general medicine as well and getting that breadth of knowledge which is still there.
Dr Emma Davies But just to practice that on a more on a daily basis and see lots of different ailments rather than one specific thing or a specific kind of subset of patients. And so I thought by doing that I could hone my skills during that time whilst I’m also training to be AGP and my skills and do have the time to kind of.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Amazing. That’s amazing. And I’m glad that your wife is doing well and I’ll be very happy to hear. I mean, what kind of things you, how did you combine all the stuff that you do with, with traditional treatments?
Dr Penny Kechagioglou And you know, it’s remarkable that you, you’ve read a lot, Obviously you studied nutrition and you used all of that in, in, in your personal journey as well. So what kind of modalities did you did you use?
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, sure. So I mean trying to think of where to start, I’ll start with diet. So we we started thinking about kind of our diet, how we could optimize it and so kind of try and follow the most anti-inflammatory kind of plant based high phytonutrients dense diet that we possibly could.
Dr Emma Davies My wife is German, so she loved a lot of cold cuts and meats, which to dismay we had we cut out. But yeah. And so we kind of all processed, processed sugar, we cut out processed meats kind of everything, whole grain, whole wheat.
Dr Emma Davies If we were having carbs, ensuring the appropriate kind of protein backbarg ratio. And if eat, trying to buy everything organic. We also, well, we completely cut out meat, but we still eat some fish. But if it was, you know, it would be wild.
Dr Emma Davies And so kind of those kind of changes that we made. And then a big, a big thing that, that she did as well, which I’m, I’m really interested to see more, more data come out about is the, the fasting around chemotherapy as well.
Dr Emma Davies And that we we attempted, we didn’t do the prolong, but we attempted kind of our version of the fasting mimicking diet around. Chemotherapy and I guess The thing is again is N of 1, so we think she’s done well or she did have side effects, but it’s difficult to tell whether, you know, she would have or wouldn’t have.
Dr Emma Davies But she did that. And we do intermittent fasting as well, 14 hours a day. So kind of the diet side of things. And then exercise. I mean, I think that was for her particularly difficult because she lost a lot of weight very rapidly because the the castle was really aggressive and really quick growing.
Dr Emma Davies So from the space of a week she was walking normally to wheelchair bound and that was just purely like her tumor markers doubled in like a few days. It was, you know, extremely aggressive. And so I think one of the things that she loves me for now, but hated me more at the time was getting her to move as much as she could within her limits, obviously, and then try to build some form of muscle, do some form of resistance training.
Dr Emma Davies And you know, I’ve got videos of her on her chemo tongue doing some exercise in her weight, which I’m very proud of her for doing that. And now she, I mean, now she engages in lots of different physical activity because she’s much more stronger.
Dr Emma Davies We do some breath work and yoga as well. And so she had, she had the breath coach that she works with and she does Reiki. She she you know, in terms of evidence base and not sure in terms of like, I know it’s been known to calm and people have then using that, but she finds it an amazing tool in her toolbox.
Dr Emma Davies She absolutely loves it. It it rejuvenates as she says, which is amazing. And then we do IV vitamin C as well, which I mean, data has just come out actually on predicting Kinnearas B rough mutations, including rectal cancer.
Dr Emma Davies It seems to me we have an effect on so and that was we started that before that data came out. So, so she has high dose IV vitamin C, we are starting mistletoe. We kind of we were thinking about doing it at the time, but she was having so many injections, so many needles and things were stabilizing that she was like, I can’t, I just, I can’t do that right now.
Dr Emma Davies And that’s the thing as well, isn’t it within integrative oncology and even just looking after a patient holistically, we have all of these tools, but it’s using them appropriately and what’s right for the patient at that time as well.
Dr Emma Davies So we’re due to do the mistletoe and then we’re also due to do some oncothermia as well with Doctrinine it down at the clinic, which I really looking forward to seeing the machine. We’re like 2 little IO geeks together.
Dr Emma Davies We’re like, can you see this? Maybe for the sake of listeners who don’t know anything about oncothermia, could just briefly explain what’s involved. Yeah, again, I’m not like a physicist so I don’t know how accurate my physics is going to be around this, but it’s the using the principles of hyperthermia.
Dr Emma Davies So I, I the try and cause tumour death essentially and it’s targeted. So it’s not, I think old research shows that, you know, people would be in baths, in hypothermia baths, which is like whole body hypothermia, but it was quite intense.
Dr Emma Davies So now they’ve designed a machine that has electrodes that target specifically targeted at tumor sites that can deliver very high heat to aim to lysed cells. So it’s a pretty good broad full on integrated protocol she’s been on.
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, I’m sure there’s more as well. I should have written it down before. Yeah, amazing. But anyway, you’ve been going for it there, which is fantastic. Obviously very sorry to hear that your wife had this horrible diagnosis so young.
Dr Emma Davies But there’s a few things you said there. I mean, you, you pointed to the fact this is actually a very virulent cancer growing very fast. And the fact you’ve stabilized it for so long in itself is astonishing, isn’t it?
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, That doesn’t happen easily. Yeah. The prognosis, I think, I mean, if you read it, they say don’t Google it. I think it was it’s a year or something, especially with metastatic and she’s still on first line treatment.
Dr Emma Davies So and it’s, it’s pet pet negative. So and, but she’s amazing as well, you know, and I think she’s been very receptive to all of the, the IO stuff. But I think what’s amazing about about everything that we do well, which I find really important is patient empowerment.
Dr Emma Davies If you just say, oh, you know, there’s nothing that you can do, Just take this medication that’s, you know, that you don’t feel any form of control and you know, and and hope there’s studies that show that if you give patients hope they live not, you know, so it’s kind of, I think giving patients empowerment and tools to feel like that they’re doing things to help themselves be as healthy as it possibly can goes a huge way, not only physically, but also mentally, psychologically, emotionally.
Robin Daly Yeah, of course they’re all one really. They’re not separate departments for just one being. You know, it’s music to my is to hear you saying this stuff. And you know, they’re obviously it’s, as I said, horrible circumstances for you to get thrown into.
Robin Daly But yeah, there’s a lot of power to having somebody who’s part of a system forced to step out the other side. I mean, you know, there are two sides that soon as the doctor and the patient and you’ve got had a clear view from both sides.
Robin Daly So you know, the the view of the doctor and why they would think the way they do. You’ve done the training. They do you, you know, you see the way that a doctor sees, but also you’ve had the benefit of this patient view.
Robin Daly What you’ve just described in terms of patient empowerment is so important and it’s so obvious to people who are patients, you know, that I talk to all the time. But the oncology professionals haven’t understood that as yet.
Robin Daly They’re, you know, they’re very happy to just say no, no, leave it to us. We’re doing everything. There’s nothing you can do, which is A, not true. And B, as you point out, is completely disempowering, which is tragic.
Robin Daly And you, you, you were just saying right at the beginning, you know, you, you said to your wife, there has to be something we can do. And that’s, that’s what patients are thinking everywhere. Well, some aren’t, I’m sure some are very passive.
Robin Daly But, you know, an awful lot of people are desperate to save their lives and they’re thinking, so there has to be something you can do. And nowadays, the message that there are things you can do is beginning to seep out into the general population, so I’m glad to say.
Robin Daly And so people are starting to have a look, You know, let’s have a look on the Internet and see. As far as I’m concerned, yeah, there’s lots of bad stuff on the Internet, but they might find something good like, yes, to life, like charity, you know, great entry point where they find out some good information.
Robin Daly There is so much stuff that people can do as you’re proving, you know, you’re, you’re demonstrating the the power of taking this very broad approach to every aspect of our well-being, you know, psychological, emotional, physical, the whole package.
Dr Emma Davies And yeah, I love hearing you talk about it as a doctor. Thank you. Yeah, I think one thing I I was listening to yours what your previous podcast with with Nina, I talked to Nina and the one thing though that you know, I’m really keen to help drive is some form of and not protocol based.
Dr Emma Davies Don’t worry, Nina, but like some form of, and I know they’re coming out, you know, guidelines now, but there’s so much like you say that you can get on the Internet or you know, even now people messaging my wife on Instagram say try this herbal cancer.
Dr Emma Davies You know, there’s so many people are such a vulnerable state when they have cancer, especially when an oncologist is telling them you’re palliative. You know, we’re just going to give you. And So what I think is really important is having trained professionals, medically trained professionals in the field, being able to sift through the evidence and appropriately apply evidence based medicine to this practice.
Dr Emma Davies Because there is so much data out there and you can find any paper to to back something up. But to be able to read the data and apply it in a Safeway is really important as well. And I think I would love to creates a field of integrated oncology because I think this year where we can create guidelines within the UK, which the BSIO is like championing.
Dr Emma Davies So I’m really excited to be a, a part of that society and to hopefully help drive in the future because it’s a scary world that cancer world and, and people are very well.
Robin Daly I totally agree. And how much safer it would be if that discipline was within healthcare so that, you know, it wasn’t like you go to the oncologist, they know nothing about what you’re doing and maybe they don’t even want to know.
Robin Daly And you go off and you do something else somewhere else. I mean, people are making it work and there are very good practitioners outside who are very responsible about checking in on what their mainstream care is and making sure they’re on the conflict.
Robin Daly But so it’d be so much better if that didn’t had to happen, if it actually was all under one roof. Yeah, we all worked in synergy with each other multidisciplinary team. It would be fantastic.
Dr Emma Davies It will. It will, Right, Penny? Absolutely.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Mean you are a doctor and for you, you have written papers as a PhD student, so you probably know how to appraise those papers in that. So I can imagine though it was still quite difficult to navigate through Google and everything that’s there and what is relevant, what is not.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou I mean, how can we make it easier as healthcare professionals who patients who actually do not have a medical background which it it must be very hard for them.
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, well, there is the no database, isn’t there? That is and I think it’s interested in oncology only database where you can type in, you know your, your, you can search for like your type of cancer, what intervention you want, etcetera, etcetera.
Dr Emma Davies So there is a kind of dedicated date space, but you still have to be able to have the scientific application to looking through and shifting through the papers in terms of what we can do for the general public or what we can do for doctors within the NHSI.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Mean to your point, your vision of having all the guidelines in one place for for the doctors who haven’t had the opportunity to be trained in nutrition or other integrative oncology aspects, do you think that is something that we can do moving forward?
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think raising awareness is number one because at the moment doctors within NHS and oncology, the oncology field don’t have much experience. And therefore like within the field and therefore just because they don’t have experience to say just, I just advise against it.
Dr Emma Davies Like that’s often the blanket term, which I completely understand in a way having been on the other side, because what you don’t want to do is, is compromise the care of your patient when you don’t know enough about it.
Dr Emma Davies I think we need to start working with oncologists and getting the message out there and kind of speak, you know, start speaking it, which everyone is already, but like having international conferences where you have speak ASCO or whatever, but you have a section within it talking about integrative oncology.
Dr Emma Davies Because what needs to happen is the world needs to start meeting each other. And it’s so tough when we’re saying things like, oh, diet and lifestyle and so and they’re like, how can we give him these huge amazing chemotherapy drugs?
Dr Emma Davies How would you know diet and lifestyle going to impact that? But unless we have that those. So I think it’s about starting to have those conversations and which it happening and you and Nina absolute example of that.
Dr Emma Davies But I think it’s somehow managing to infiltrate into the into the conventional medicine system that actually if you, if you look at the data, then I mean, there’s some great meta analysis which are quite easy to pinpoint people to showing all different mechanisms of action, all the like a great comprehensive summary of in vitro and vivo and clinical trial data.
Dr Emma Davies So there are really good metro analysis out there. I guess that and if you have a discussion with the oncologist as well can check out this metro analysis. If you have any questions that we can have a discussion, I’m not sure. Penny, what do you do you have any any ideas?
Dr Penny Kechagioglou I think your point about have consistent presence, interpretive oncology presence in the big surgical and oncology, I think it’s really important really you know, there has been great movement through BSIO over the last two to three years I would say and we’ve met in the integrative personalized Medicine conference.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou So that tells you that, you know, the community is coming together, but we’ll interlink in with other countries where they’re more advanced and I think joining forces, I think that’s the key.
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, I think especially within Europe to start with, because I think obviously the conferences often happen as to the hemisphere as well. So if you start, if you start local and then you push out. But but there’s so much of obviously Nuggets of information from the US as well, SIO and and then they and it was amazing.
Dr Emma Davies They’ve, they’ve written, recently written which Nina, yeah, she knows part of was the kind of SO ASCO joint joint guidelines recently, which was really great as well. So there is that.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou As well that has been founded the integrative oncology, the National Integrative oncology journey. There is definitely positive movement forward.
Dr Emma Davies Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Robin Daly Well, what a great discussion. Lovely to hear your story, Emma. You know, really exciting in a way. I mean, obviously a difficult one, but, but to have someone who’s obviously you haven’t turned your back on any of your oncology skills, this is not either or, this is integration.
Robin Daly And I think you’re quite clear that you just learnt lots of stuff that will add to what you already know and for the benefit of patients and patients can only benefit from a broader field of information that their care is coming from.
Robin Daly So fantastic. And yeah, I, I hope that you’re able to get that message too, by being a doctor that your, your, what you say carries a weight that my, anything I say doesn’t carry because, you know, what do I know about oncology?
Robin Daly But it’s powerful to have somebody like you speaking so passionately about integration and what it can bring to patients.
Dr Emma Davies Thank you. I mean, I just on a final note, I was just thinking about a conversation that myself and Nina were having.
Dr Emma Davies And I think one of the issues as well is that oncology is obviously quite a niche field within medicine. Like it’s, it’s it’s own new learning and it’s own specialty. It’s it’s, you know, learning all about the different drugs.
Dr Emma Davies But cancer in itself is, it’s lots of different mechanisms that you need to understand the hallmark, all the different hallmarks of cancer and to have an interested oncologist of of myself and Nina were discussing how important it is to have those fundamental understandings of kind of hallmarks of cancer and kind of basic oncology knowledge.
Dr Emma Davies But also have the want to discuss diet and lifestyle and all of these integrative therapies and acupuncture. That’s another thing that we do. I knew there was something that we have off the list and that kind of that combination doesn’t normally come about very often though.
Dr Emma Davies It’s kind of how do we do that as well. Do we look at oncology trainees and find out if any of them are interested in the interest of oncology side or do you make it it’s own specialty without oncology training, but then you are not yet sufficient in the knowledge of oncology.
Dr Emma Davies So I think it’s also you kind of need to be slightly dual trained in a way.
Robin Daly No, it’s particularly useful to be in your position where you’ve done your your done the oncology, you’ve got that under your belt and then you’re learning this on top.
Robin Daly And so as I say, you have a real breadth of experience to share, which nobody can say you don’t know a thing about it because you obviously do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much indeed for the lovely chat. Thank you, Emma.
Dr Emma Davies Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was lovely to meet you though.
Dr Penny Kechagioglou Thank you, Emma, Bye.
Robin Daly Thank you for listening to Cancer Talk. Do subscribe and look out for the next. Edition of our podcast. And if you have friends and colleagues interested in the development of UK cancer care, do pass on the details of Cancer Talk Goodbye.
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