Radiation Oncology

[twinsmom]

Hey - is anyone out there in the radiation oncology field? I am just looking for some information as to what it entails. (day to day practice, etc.). Thanks for the info!

Jen

Yep

Have worked as a physicist, dosimetry and treatment.

Its a nice specialty - 9-5, very little on-call or emergeny work (for the consultant anyway).

See patient at intial consult, sim, markup and once weekly treatment review. The acutal day to day tasks very somewhat depending on where you are. When I have worked in the US - the Rad Onc's liked to do more of the treatment planning. Here in AU they will only every mark the area to be treated (Target Volume) write the prescripted dose and leave the rest up to the radiation therapists to plan. They then review and approve/amend the treatment plans.

In the US i also found that they liked to be the ones to review the port films (films that check the accuracy of the treatment field placement). Here you would be hard pressed to get a rad onc to be interested in that.

Radiation biology is an intergral part. Fortunatly (for me) most rad onc don't want to know about the technology. Despite being a highly technical field, physicans have very little to do the actual treating of patients or using the equipment.

The only exception is perhaps Brachytherapy which uses internal sources. It will always be the physicist or therapist that hits "BEAM ON"

If you are a specialist in a small department - your bread and butter work is breast and prostate. This gets very very boring.

In a bigger department you find the more interesting work. Ie paeds, neuro, sterotactic radiosurgery, gamma knife etc.

To many it is not the most interesting field. In the AU there is a chronic shortage of all rad onc staff - not just physicans just radiation therapists and physicists. Many trainees use it as a spring board to get into radiology progams.