Career Guide: Want to be a Therapeutic Radiographer?

Welcome to the WOW Show Careers Guides. This is all about therapeutic radiography. One of the 14 Allied Health Professions. It's one of those jobs not many people know about. and it's an incredibly rewarding and unique career. As you'll hear from Daniela and Sarah, It's a job that combines caring for people with excellent communication skills and cutting-edge technology. technology. Let's find out more. A therapeutic radiographer is someone who treats cancer. using extremely high-energy X-rays, we are somewhat involved in the patient's cancer treatment process and we will meet the patient when their cancer has been diagnosed and when it has been decided that radiotherapy is an appropriate treatment. There are days when it is tough and sad things do happen. happen, but the majority of our time is spent so happy and so upbeat. It's such a positive environment. It's really exciting at the moment because there are so many avenues you can explore. down as a therapeutic radiographer. There are many radiographers who specialise in prostate cancer or breast cancer, head and neck, lung, everything you can think of, and there's a therapeutic radiographer who specializes in that role, not merely in anatomical aspects sites, but because our role is so dependent on technology, there are lots of different technological roles you can have. You can go into management, you can go into becoming a specialist in imaging, you can become a specialist in a certain type of cancer, and there are just so many different ones pathways, although they're all within oncology cancer radiotherapy. At university, it tends to be split more or less 50-50 between your academic time, so the time that you spend physically at Attending university lectures and being on placement, but having that on-the-job learning is so important. My degree was in radiotherapy and oncology. There are many different components to the program, so it's Quite a nice one to do if you know you like science or if you know you want to go into something with people. My course had a large amount of placement rather than university-based study, so I probably I did a 60-hour placement at a hospital and was literally working with people who were doing the same job I was. qualifying to do. Before I started the course, I approached the local hospital that had a radiotherapy department. department, and they were incredibly happy to have someone interested, and I actually spent three days there. in the department. What universities tend to do is tell you to start looking for jobs as You're coming in, I'd say, around the middle of your final year, so a lot of the time, people completing their degree with a job waiting for them. I've been lucky enough to experience treating pediatric patients using a system called tomotherapy, which is a slightly different machine Basically, a slightly different treatment technique. There are many different places within my department. as well as the fact that I haven't been to yet something called Cyber Knife, which is essentially like a robotic treatment for extremely small lesions in the brain and abdomen, but it's all really exciting, and there's so much that I can do and so much more to learn, even though I've Graduated from university. It's really important to be able to communicate effectively with people. you're meeting people who have probably just been told they have cancer, people who are have been through quite a whirlwind of scans, treatment planning, and doctor meetings, and so on It's important to be able to communicate in a way that calms them down and gets your message across. The best part about therapeutic radiography, in my opinion, is the patients. Everyone has a different life, a different job, a different set of circumstances, and it's our job to make them feel at ease. Some of our patients come in for treatment Monday through Friday every day, so you really get to build a relationship with them. It's truly fantastic to see how people grow and progress and get to be a part of that journey. Even if you're only seeing them for 15 minutes a day you have to squeeze all of your kind of kindness and reassurance and everything else as well as treating their cancer all within that 15 minutes, and I think it's just such a rewarding part of the job when you see somebody who's maybe coming in for six weeks slowly start to relax, start to Joke around with you, show you pictures of their children, and gradually get to know you and trust you. You can find out more by visiting healthcareers.nhs.uk and searching for therapeutic radiography. As you will see, you will need certain qualifications to become a therapeutic radiographer, but you can also become a radiography assistant or imaging support worker. As a newly qualified therapeutic As a radiographer, you can expect to receive a salary of just under £25,000 a year. Thank you for watching this WOW Show Careers Guide. Check out the resources to help you Find out more. Looking forward to seeing you again soon. Bye!