Residency Program

The Radiation Oncology Residency Program at the University of Washington (UW) is a four-year program beginning in the resident’s R-2 year.  The program, which accepts two residents annually, is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and participates in the National Intern and Resident Matching Program.

The Radiation Oncology Department is located in the University of Washington Medical Center on the main campus of the UW in Seattle.  There is immediate access to all schools and colleges of the University as well as the Regional Health Sciences Library.  The Department serves a broad spectrum of patients referred from the University Medical Center, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) and their affiliated hospitals ú Harborview Medical Center and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center.  Other referrals come from local, regional, national and international sources.

The principal objective of the residency program is to offer training in clinical radiation oncology, treatment planning, radiation physics and radiobiology enabling graduates to provide comprehensive patient care as practicing radiation oncologists.

Residents play an active role in the management of a broad spectrum of patients.  Attending and resident physicians work as a team, with the resident assuming primary care responsibilities for patients while under attending supervision.  Radiotherapy simulation and dosimetric treatment planning are performed by this team with the resident gradually assuming increased responsibility as they go through training.  The resident then follows the patient, under attending guidance, through the course of radiation treatment and subsequently in post-treatment follow-up clinics.  There are active programs in both low dose rate and high dose rate brachytherapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, intraoperative radiotherapy, intensity modulated radiation therapy and fast neutron beam radiotherapy.

An integrated multidisciplinary approach to the care of the cancer patients is stressed.  Radiation Oncology, specialists from Medical Oncology, Surgical Oncology, Hematology, Neurologic Oncology, Gynecologic Oncology and Musculoskeletal Oncology provide regularly scheduled multi-specialty clinics at various sites.  These multi-specialty services also hold weekly conferences where new patients are presented, the pathology and imaging is analyzed and evidence-based management is discussed.

Weekly radiation oncology patient care conferences are also held at both the UW and the SCCA providing the residents with an opportunity to present new patient cases to faculty members and other residents.  Rationale and plans for treatment are discussed and pertinent literature is reviewed.  Beam films and dosimetry plans are reviewed by the resident and attending staff during these conferences.  Clinical didactics are provided through regular journal clubs and a faculty lecture series.

Didactic radiation physics and radiobiology lectures are provided by departmental faculty.  The didactic information is physics is also supplemented by a one-month rotation in clinical dosimetry, providing residents with an understanding of teletherapy and brachytherapy, treatment plan development and interpretation, linear accelerator function and beam calibration.

Each resident is encouraged to pursue clinical and/or basic science research under the guidance of a faculty member.  Work that is deemed of high caliber is submitted to scientific meetings where the resident might have the opportunity to present his or her research results in a nation or international forum.

The program faculty includes board-certified radiation oncologists, radiation biologists and medical physicists.  Faculty members are involved in many areas of basic science and clinical research and actively participate in regional and national scientific societies and in continuing education.  In addition, the Department has clinical faculty who are practicing radiation oncologists in Washington, Idaho and Alaska and who contribute to resident education.  The Department of Radiation Oncology and its faculty are recognized nationally and internationally.

The UWMC Cancer Center, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and Harborview Medical Center are tertiary referral and treatment centers.  Radiation equipment includes a state-of-the-art treatment planning system including PRISM treatment planning software; a Prowess prostate brachytherapy treatment planning system; a Philips SLS simulator with digital spot imaging unit; 5 linear accelerators-- four Philips SL-20 with multileaf collimators with one room equipped for intraoperative radiotherapy and a Varian Clinac 4; a Nucletron high dose rate brachytherapy applicator; a Philips SRS 200 stereotactic radiosurgery system; a Leksell Gamma Knife unit and two Siemens Ultrasound Imaging Systems.  The Department is a national and international resource for fast neutron radiotherapy through a hospital-based (UW) isocentric-capable Scanditronix cyclotron with computer-controlled multileaf collimator interfaced with the 3-D treatment planning system.

The Department has a wide variety of computer equipment for clinical data management, office automation and data analysis.  All computers are linked to the Internet providing access to MEDLINE, the University of Washington on-line catalog, other university library on-line catalog systems and e-mail. The UW, SCCA, Harborview Medical Center and VA all have on-line medical records which can by accessed by secure-link from a personal computer.  Ethernet-linked terminals connect the department to key Medical Center services as well as access to patient services at our affiliate institutions.

Residents who have completed this residency program practice throughout the United States.