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Kristen Dezell
Service Project - Employer
DOS 772: Clinical Practicum III

Investing time into training and learning is very important, especially as our medical
dosimetry field is experiencing nationwide dynamic growth. My radiation oncology department
at Mayo Clinic is anticipating quite a bit of growth within the next few years as we expand our
photon and proton departments, thus opening up many new medical dosimetry positions.
Though my department provides a medical dosimetry internship affiliation with the University of
Wisconsin - La Crosse, only a limited number of students can enroll at Mayo Clinic’s internship
site each year. As my department hires more and more dosimetry and physics staff who
complete their clinical training elsewhere, they found that there is a need to provide training
specific to our Mayo Clinic department, and this training takes a lot of time. Historically, all
dosimetry training has been completed in-person. However, as my department explores more
remote work, they have implemented pre-recorded training videos to help introduce treatment
planning concepts for a variety of disease sites. These training videos have been pivotal in my
own clinical internship training, but learners have expressed the need for more videos to help
with other key concepts in the planning process. To help my department with these efforts, I
volunteered to write outlines and record videos for the final “paperwork” aspects of our 3D and
IMRT treatment plans.
As I previously mentioned, training videos have proved to be an effective method for our
dosimetry training needs based on my own clinical experience and other learner feedback.
Initially, there was a misconception that virtual training may not be as effective as the traditional
in-person training. With time and experience, that misconception has proven to be false. In fact,
the virtual training has actually shown to be more effective in that the learner can start and stop
the video at any time if something was misheard, and the learner can go back and rewatch the
video multiple times to reenforce learned concepts that otherwise would not be possible with an
in-person, non-recorded conversation.
In order to assist with my department virtual training efforts in the final paperwork items
needed to complete after planning, I first created two outlines: one outline for a 3D plan that
would require merging subfields and explaining nuances of field time considerations and our
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second check QA program, and another outline for an IMRT plan that would require slight
differences in field time considerations and QA. While both outlines contained many
similarities, my department wanted to separate the videos to avoid confusion for new learners.
After reviewing the outlines with my clinical preceptor and creating anonymized plans, I then
recorded both videos and made sure to highlight the similarities and differences between them.
Finally, I uploaded the videos for editing so they could be published for new medical dosimetrist
and medical physics training purposes.
Helping my department in this way allowed me to be a part of improving the training
process for future learners. I started some 3D planning as a Medical Dosimetry Assistant prior to
starting this clinical program, and I did not have any of these videos to learn from at that time.
After I began my clinical rotation in January of 2022, I was fortunate to have access to these new
videos, and the virtual training experience was vastly different and more effective than in-person.
I was able to practice planning concepts while starting and stopping the videos to listen and
watch the medical dosimetrist, and this also saved a tremendous amount of time on the trainer. I
spent my time with the trainer by asking questions and obtaining planning feedback, but
otherwise hours were saved through virtual training. Though recording these videos was slightly
intimidating at first, I am happy and proud to contribute to the training process for new learners
to have a simple reference as they complete the final paperwork aspects of their plans.
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Figure 1: Outline of the paperwork process for 3D planning (3D differences highlighted in
purple).
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Figure 2: Outline of the paperwork process for IMRT planning (IMRT differences highlighted in
green).