You’re studying to be a radiation therapist, eh? So, you want to take x-rays?
“No. We don’t take x-rays,” says BCIT student Brynn Tomie. “We don’t work in the hospitals. We only work in cancer treatment centres. It’s radiation as in cancer and cancer treatment. It’s extremely specific.”
In her first year in the BCIT Radiation Therapy program, Brynn Tomie has found herself explaining the field a number of times.
“Basically here’s how it works—there’s a giant machine that emits radiation. The radiation targets the tumor and that’s a good way to kill cancer cells. A radiation therapist is the one who is on the treatment units, does all the patient set up, and administers the actual radiation. We also play a role in the planning and imaging.”
Brynn first heard about Radiation Therapy as a career option while in a fourth year seminar course at the University of Victoria, where she studied Biology. She attended a lunch-hour session where she got to hear from different professionals who worked in the Cancer Centre in Victoria.
“We got to hear every single side of cancer and the total treatment process,” she recalls. “And honestly, the first time I walked into the building [BC Cancer Centre Victoria] I knew I had to work there. The atmosphere was amazing. The staff were amazing.”
Brynn continued her investigation into Radiation Therapy when she began volunteering at the BC Cancer Centre in her fifth year of University.
“I found that I had a total love for interacting with the patients. I would leave my four-hour shift and just be so happy for the rest of the day. I would come home with all these great stories about how much I loved it and how great it was and I just thought, how do I get myself into here?”
A former BCIT grad working at the BC Cancer Agency filled Brynn in on what it takes to become a Radiation Therapist. BCIT is the only school in British Columbia that offers a Radiation Therapist program, but because she was eager to pursue this career, Brynn applied to programs in Toronto and Edmonton as well. After being accepted to all three programs, Brynn chose BCIT because of her desire to stay on the west coast and because of BCIT’s small class sizes and applied learning models.
“I came from a big university with really big classes and I was intrigued by the thought of my teachers knowing my name. All my teachers [at BCIT] know who I am. They know that I’m chatty. So that’s been really cool. I also really wanted to work at BC Cancer in Victoria one day and being educated here and doing my practicums under the BC Cancer umbrella is a huge bonus [in getting a job here].”
BCIT is well known for our hands-on approach to learning—Radiation Therapy students are in the clinical environment very early on in their education.
BCIT “gets you into the [real-world work] setting early so you can figure out if it’s something that you actually want to do. In our very first week, we got to do a four hour job shadow and we got to go to the cancer centre and just watch things happen.”
Radiation Therapy is a very specialized field in the health care sector. Radiation therapists in BC only work in the six BC Cancer Agency centres located in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey, Abbotsford, Prince George, and Kelowna. It takes a specific type of individual to work in Radiation Therapy with cancer patients.
“You have to be compassionate. You’re dealing with people who are in a fragile situation so if you’re able to show some empathy and provide support . . . it just makes a huge difference for [the patients]. You also have to be interested in science, interested in technology and you also have to enjoy interacting with people while also being competent science-wise. It does involve a lot of skills.”
BCIT’s Radiation Therapy program is now accepting applications for the fall 2017 term start.