Radiography's based at Penrhyn Road and we offer a range of courses: two undergraduate
courses in radiotherapy and diagnostic radiography and also a foundation degree in breast imaging
which is quite a specialist unique area. Therapeutic radiography is related mainly to the treatment
of cancer using radiation.
We've got some really exciting equipment that our students get to use on the therapy programme
and I'll start with the VIRTS, which is the virtual education radiotherapy training software programme.
It's a massive screen in a dedicated room that we have over on the Penrhyn Road site
and it basically simulates a treatment room and it's fully immersive and fully interactive.
The students get to use the handsets that control the linear accelerator which is the
treatment machine that they will be using when they go out into practice.
To complement a learning undertaken in VIRT we have a modern treatment planning system.
What the treatment planning system will ask the students to do is: learn how each of
those radiation beams that enter the patient, the interactions that occur within the patient
and how each section of bone or muscle absorbs radiation.
It's my core values, my enthusiasm and my passion for therapy to be a therapy radiographer
as I am, that I would want them to aspire to be.
I chose to study therapeutic radiography because of the science and technology involved, and the
patient interaction that you get from it. It's also something which I thought would
give me great job satisfaction to be able to help people while also doing something
that I'm passionate about.
On our postgraduate courses we have a unique partnership with breast screening training centres;
one at the Jarvis Centre down in Guildford and one at St George's.
It is a unique partnership and it offers the expertise in the breast imaging field to enable our
students to develop the skills necessary for that particular aspect of diagnosis and care.
The Jarvis was one of the pilot centres for breast screening, opening back in 1984 and
being the first place to start screening women when the breast screening programme was introduced in 1986.
We have, by being in partnership with both of those centres, the Jarvis and St George's
an absolute wealth of expertise and experience.
I feel that with the partnership between the University and both these centres of clinical
excellence we really have got the best of all worlds.
Diagnostic radiography represents all of the different imaging aspects that the student
is going to encounter in practice and finally as a practitioner so that would include the
normal aspects of what we would call x-rays through to CT scanning, ultrasound, magnetic
resonance imaging and other imaging modalities. So it incorporates the natural sciences in
the programme but also the social science aspects of caring for patients which they
are going to undertake once they're in practice.
I like diagnostic radiography because it's diagnosing, you have to learn different things
and different pathologies, different fractures, and then you have to put two and two together when you see the patient.
Can you do something extra to get more diagnostic information?
So it's like a little investigation which is cool.
One of the big things about our course is the fact that it is small, it is friendly and
the people that you graduate 10, 15 years down the line are still coming back
and saying, "Hi, how are you, what's going on?", being friends.
I think what radiography at Kingston and St George's really excels at is the fact that
we do provide good support for our students, high quality programmes and the students actually
are high achievers and go on to actually become very prominent in the radiography profession.
The course is really helpful because it gives you a whole year placement so you do feel
like you're working all the time and obviously the radiographers and everybody treat you
as if you're one of them.
For them it embodies why they did radiography and their aim is to undertake the programme
and get into practice and actually start to help people, which is the main aim that
any of the healthcare professionals has got.
If I had to describe studying diagnostic radiography in Kingston and St George's in three words
it would have to be interesting, fun and quite emotional.