I will try to answer as best as I can.. I am just a medical student who has down a few hem/onc rotations.. however it would best for you to seek answers from the best source.. hem/onc staff themselves..
Firstly, prospects are good. Malignancy is still and will continue to be one of the major battles that medicine has to contend it. For many years, hem/onc was unpopular as a career, no where as glamourous as say cards.. many people had felt that hem/onc was a depressing field, always dealing with dying people whom which nothing much could be done to help them, much less cure them. Therefore there are not as many hem/onc docs around, and there is still need for more.
I also feel that hem/onc is going to an exciting field in the coming years. Much progress as been made in this field. With advances in genetics and molecular biology, it is hoped that new targetted therapy could be found for at least some cancers. And in some cases this has already been shown to be somewhat successful, such as anti-CD 20 ab for NHL and ATRA for APL.
Hours, well it really depends. There are not many hem/onc emergencies to speak off. So calls should be pretty tame. Hours can be long when you are an attending on the leukemia service or the BMT service. But otherwise a lot of hem/onc is done in the clinics.
Salary would be in the midrange. Not many procedures that you could bill for except for bone marrow biopsies.
But yet enough patients with cancers to keep you busy.
Competitiveness? I would place it at around the region of endo. But it does seem to be increasing in popularity. In some int med programs, of the subspecialties that graduates go into, hem/omc ranks third after Cards and GI.
Hope I have answered some of your questions. Good luck!
