Princess Margaret Hospital Experience

This week I have had been visiting Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. On my first day I had 'the grand tour' around this impressive large oncology centre. Compared to UK departments the technology was significantly advanced and all patients were receiving IMRT and IGRT was a standard technique adopted. I was particularly impressed with the CT/MRI simulator suites and their use of SPECT. With 17 linear accelerators it is the largest radiotherapy department I have ever visited.

The facilities and services available to patients are similar to those in the UK, but everything appears to be on a much larger scale.

PMH has about 42 students and has a maximum of 32 students in at any one time. Due to the size of the department quite often there is only one student per machine. Students do get an IPE placement whereby they visit other departments within the hospital.

I met with Clinical Co-ordinators (CC's), whose role echoes those of our Professional Development Facilitators. They are employed by the hospital but have sole responsibility for educating the students, scheduling their time in the department and providing pastoral care and support. There is also the role of Clinical Educator who is solely responsible for educating clinical staff and promoting professional development.

It was interesting the issues which arose:

- It is very rare that CC's from PMH communicate with other CC's in other departments, to share best practice or discuss effective strategies in student support.

- There are 5 CC's, 1 full time and 4 who still work 20% of the time in the department.

- When CC's are working as a staff member they tend to distance themselves from students so that they can distinguish the two roles. They feel this helps students appreciate their knowledge more by seeing them in the 'Therapy Radiographer role'.

- The CC's have some form of training but no formal qualification in student education.

- The CC's put on lectures and tutorials but also work onset with students and facilitate integration of theory into practice.

There appears to be a lot of support available to students within clinical. There are the CC's, the reference therapists (similar to Senior 1's) who will be responsible for evaluating the student during their placement, a point person who will assist the student and review competencies, the student can also be allocated a mentor and a tutor if required and there is also a counsellor available if students require it.

There appears to be so many mechanisms for support available that students can gain a lot of feedback from various sources. Students are evaluated on a weekly basis and receive a feedback form from the reference therapist regarding their performance. It appears that if a student is having issues or wobbles then they are often able to be pacified by one source or another.

Speaking to the first year students was enlightening. It appears they still have similar issues to UK students; however the biggest factor was the financing. Students in Canada have to pay their own tuition fees of $7,000 a year. As they have already undertaken a year or more of another degree course they may already have a significant amount of student debt. 100% of the students I spoke to said that it wouldn't be an easy decision to quit because of the financial impact. They also appreciate the financial rewards of the job once they qualify.

It was also interesting that due to the programme organisation that if someone fails a course repeatedly they then have to repeat the year and pay again for the year’s tuition fees. This can be seen as a motivating variable to pass academic components first time around, however students felt it was money making scheme by the university. It has been really interesting visiting PMH, I am visiting Sunnybrook tomorrow so it will be interesting to compare the two centres in terms of clinical support and training for students.