Improve Training

It is one of your responsibilities to train the trainees when you finish your own training. Part of the Fellowship deal - and as Shakespeare (William, not Tom) said:

He is not worthy of the honeycomb, that shuns the hives because the bees have stings.

Translation: The registrar is not worthy of the Fellowship, that avoids the exams because of the work involved. Approximately.

So if you put a little thought in as you go through this experience, you can make it easier for those after you. What can you do?

Registrar Archive It should be obvious to you as you go through the areas of study that there are several types of resources that are worth keeping. The excellent explanation of a difficult area that isn't really core, e.g., a booklet describing the physics, and engineering of a linac might be nice, maybe include copies of all those articles that people sprout about - like we all know what they mean (believe me there are still surprises in reading the really foundational literature. Literature like the paper by Knudson which is widely thought to contain his hypothesis that led to the discovery of the oncogene. To give you an idea of how inept our knowledge is in this area, I pose one question.
Other beauties include Coutard's 1923 article from the American Journal of Roentgenology. Question:
And the Marcus & Puck article on the cell survival curve.
And on it goes! The papers by Ed Barendsen (LQ), Ellis (NSD formalism), Taylor (repopulation), there are lots. They are consistently referenced and can rightly be called seminal articles, and so are worthy of respect - which you demonstrate by reading and marveling at how high the shoulders of these giants are.
Registrar Experiences keep a list of activities that you found useful for learning your stuff. This will obviously NOT include going to the next clinic, because we all know that that is only a small part of any one's organised training (unless you are Canadian). If you don't have any activities to include on your list, this should serve as a barometer for your level of understanding of radiotherapy issues. You don't get a car license by learning how to drive from a book, do you? No, you are expected to actually do it, because the doing is integral to knowing and understanding. How can you be sure that you understand about QA of the isocentre - go and be involved in QA'ing the isocentre. If you recognise and can predict all the steps, then you probably understand the process, and writing about it for your exams will be very easy. But if all you did was read Khan, then you are going to serve up soemthing which looks like an isocentre QA, but is jumbled and has the examiner scratching his head and thinking - "the lights are on (ie, words are all there), but no one's at home (they don't really understand what they write".

Why is this important? Because when my mother/wife/daughter/son/sister/brother fronts up to be treated by you, you are supposed to apply your UNDERSTANDING to solving the problem of their cancer. Nobody thinks that their oncologist is applying the textbook to curing a cancer. No! So why give a textbook answer to a question and think it is a substitute for your understanding.

Mind you, the oncology textbook cured all the textbooks with cancer. I am labouring the point, siffuce to say it is your understanding which is crucial to your performance.

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