Residents are paired with attending physicians on a 1:1 basis for two-month blocks (note that certain elective or offsite rotations may only be one month, and thus may result in a one-month rotation with an attending—however, this is an exception). During this time, residents are responsible for seeing all new patient consultations, follow-up visits and on-treatment visits, and are also responsible for contouring cases and developing and evaluating radiation plans.
The Clinical Didactic Lecture Series consists of lectures two mornings per week. The lecture series is primarily broken up into two-month blocks focusing on particular disease sites (e.g., breast, GU, head and neck). Smaller topics (e.g., benign ocular diseases and sarcoma) are typically grouped together as paired one-month blocks. Most blocks conclude with a mock oral boards session designed to give trainees practice with ABR style oral examinations.
This is a monthly case conference mentored by the Chief Resident who discusses cases with exceptional educational value and/or interest. Trainees present the presentation, staging and treatment of cases while pointing out relevant imaging and pathology findings. Finally, sufficient time will be used to conduct a thorough analysis of the radiation treatment plan.
All cases that are starting treatment in the department are reviewed during this weekly conference. Cases are presented by the resident on the respective service, and the Socratic method is often employed to make teaching points.
The Medical Physics and the Radiation Biology lectures are given on alternating six month blocks throughout the year. Each lecture is led by a faculty member with expertise in that area. Residents can check their progress against their national cohorts through the use of standardized tests such as the ACR In-Training, RAPHEX and RABEX.
The clinical didactics include sessions focusing on either of classic practice setting studies or of recently published innovative articles pertaining to clinical radiation oncology, biology and/or physics. An emphasis is placed on multidisciplinary care. All residents and faculty are expected to attend.
Each month, residents and faculty discuss patient care issues and safety at quality conferences. Patients who have experienced treatment breaks, ER visits and/or severe toxicities are discussed with an educational perspective. Residents are also required to complete one clinical quality improvement (CQI) project during residency.
Residents attend multidisciplinary tumor boards relevant to their rotation in order to gain experience in this important forum for interdisciplinary interactions. The exposure to medical oncology, pathology, surgical oncology and radiology serves to meet ACGME requirements in these areas.
The Department regularly hosts prominent academicians from institutions across the country for research seminars. Invited faculty members are selected based on their contributions to clinical care and scientific discovery.