RTi3:X Celebrating a Decade of Inquiry, Inspiration, and Innovation in Radiation Therapy
RTi3 attendees from centres across Canada celebrating the launch of the Research for the Radiation Therapist textbook at the University of Toronto Art Centre
We’ve come a long way, baby!
RTi3:X Celebrating a Decade of Inquiry, Inspiration, and Innovation in Radiation Therapy
Story by Caitlin Gillan
UT DRO is part of a strong legacy in radiation therapist research and continuing education in Canada. February 13-15 marked the tenth anniversary of RTi3 – the premier national radiation therapy conference which has successfully married these two elements together for the past decade. Held at the Chestnut Conference Centre, where it has been held a number of times over the years, this milestone was celebrated in style.
The 2014 RTi3 Co-Chairs, Caitlin Gillan and Lisa DiProspero (Assistant Professors at the Princess Margaret and OCC respectively) worked with a dedicated committee to provide an enriching and engaging program for the over 160 registrants, that included 41 proferred oral presentations, 3 workshops, and 37 posters, many of which were presented by UT DRO faculty and students. The ELIIT Research Academy was held as a successful pre-conference event, run in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists and the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences. Another unique highlight of this anniversary program was a “National Innovation Snapshot”, where 14 centres across the country participated in a rapid-fire session of three-minute vignettes on a successful innovation within their institutions. As part of RTi3’s mandate to provide accessible continuing education, this session will be broadcast nationally as a webinar in the coming months.
The strong message of this year’s conference was how far we have come in ten years. In 2004, it would not have been imaginable that a two day program could have been filled with high quality proferred papers representing work led and presented by radiation therapists, and of the utmost relevance to our practice. As one of our four keynote speakers, Cynthia Eccles came back to her UT DRO roots to present a narrative of her own research journey, which has since led her to her PhD work at the University of Oxford. Other UT DRO successes were also acknowledged, including awards for the Highest Ranked “Inquire” Oral Abstract to Darby Erler, a student in the MHScMRS Program, and the Highest Ranked “Innovate” Poster Abstract to Floortje Brus, a radiation therapy student in the joint BSc /diploma Medical Radiation Sciences Program.
RTi3:X co-chairs Caitlin Gillan and Lisa DiProspero with past committee members Angela Cashell and Maurene McQuestion
Held in conjunction with the conference was a wine and cheese social event to celebrate RTi3’s tenth anniversary. At the University of Toronto Art Centre, UT DRO Chair Fei-Fei Liu offered her congratulations for the role of RTi3 in pushing the boundaries of radiation therapy research. Past conference chairs – Tara Rosewall, Amanda Bolderston, Ruth Barker, and Maurene McQuestion – were present, and there was much reminiscing about past conferences as well as planning for innovation for the future. This event also served as the launch of a new radiation therapy research resource book entitled “Research for the Radiation Therapist: from Question to Culture”, which benefited from the leadership and contributions of many UT DRO radiation therapists.
With RTi3:X a great success, we are already thinking ahead to next year…. In fact, we’re already thinking ahead to RTi3:XX in 2024. What ground will UT DRO radiation therapists and students be breaking then?