Radiation Therapy Specialties

When one reads about radiation therapy in the news, the first instinct is to think “women, breast cancer, and radiation treatment”. But not all radiation treatment is geared towards women and women alone. Men and children also suffer from cancers that must be treated with radiation. Therefore, it’s important when considering a career in Radiation Therapy that you take the time to consider the type of patients you’d like to work with and if you’d serve those patients better by specializing in a specific field of study.

Radiation therapists can specialize in the type of cancer they treat, thus ensuring their patients receive the utmost care, empathy, and treatment. But in order to specialize, one must learn more than just medical procedures; one must understand what each type of cancer does to the patient’s physical, mental, and spiritual being. Only then can the therapist truly help the patient.

If you are considering specializing based on a “type” of cancer, here’s a short list to start with:

• Bladder cancer
  
• Bone cancer
  
• Brain cancer
  
• Breast cancer
  
• Lung cancer
  
• Ovarian cancer
  
• Prostate cancer
  
• Skin cancer
  

Once you know the type of cancer you’d like to help treat, take the time to get to know how that cancer affects the daily lives of your patients, only then will you be able to truly help them heal and move forward with their lives.

Come back on Monday to learn more about IAMP and its programs.

Making Money As A Radiographer

While visiting the forums today, we ran across an old—yet timeless—topic on wages. A guest poster on Radiography.com’s forum posted the question, “After you graduate from a certificate or associate hospital based program - what's the average start out pay?”

It’s a great question to ask when deciding what field of study to enter into because in today’s day and age, a starting salary of $10 per hour isn’t going to afford you a nice home, a safe neighborhood, or a decent car.

As you may recall, back in January, we discussed what radiographers make. In fact, we stated “Radiographers, also known as x-ray technicians, earn $39,605 to $53,360 per year, on the average—increasing and decreasing depending on where the radiographer lives geographically—and usually spend their days x-raying bones for fractures and breaks, providing ultrasounds, and performing other imaging procedures. “

But as discussed in the forum, one must take into account the geographic area one lives in as well as the demand (or need) for radiographers. If an area is oversaturated with radiographers, hospitals can afford to offer less pay per hour. If an area is in desperate need of radiographers, hospitals have been known to offer what is known as “sign on bonuses” and higher salaries—just to get qualified help!

Come back on Monday to learn more about IAMP and its programs.