Tallinn, Estonia, 7-11 September 2024

My name is Daniela and I am currently working as a medical physicist at the Military University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic. I have only about one year’s clinical experience in this field; I took up this job right after I completed my Master's degree in biomedical physics at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Since I was always interested in medicine and physics, this job was the perfect combination and choice for me.

I decided to attend this course to widen my knowledge of radiobiology. It is a fascinating field for me.

Ever since I started working I have tended to question everything. This led me to try many times to collect all possible data about each patient we were to treat, as I believed that every patient and their treatment should be individually prepared in order to achieve the best outcome possible. Yet the reality was different and I wanted to know why. Could we do better?

I started to dig out any relevant trial or research through the internet, but the information I collected did not satisfy me.

Thus I decided to attend this course to learn the basic and latest knowledge in radiobiology and to use this knowledge to give patients the best treatment possible from a physicist’s position, and maybe lead others to aim for better outcomes for all our patients too.

What I loved about this course was how the lectures were conducted. They were informative, interesting and understandable (for me at least). I loved especially the historical approach in explanations, which gave information about the accuracy of the equations that are used and variables such as α/β ratios.

I also liked the smooth way in which one lecture was connected to another and even to real practice and treatment.

For me, the most interesting part was the discussion about “real“ patients and their treatments. I was able to see the approach from all sides of the medical team. How do they come up with the treatment plan? How do they understand the needs of patients? The course was highly beneficial for members of multidisciplinary medical teams, as it helped improve communication between different professions. Challenges often arise due to the use of varied jargon, technical terms, and the need to deal with multiple disciplines. By addressing these issues, the course successfully enhanced inter-professional communication. I do think that fruitful conversation and teamwork is an important step towards better treatments for patients.

This course gave me a better understanding of radiobiology and radiotherapy in practice. It also answered most of my questions. Thanks to this course, I got to know about trials and research that are ongoing right now so that I could maintainmy knowledge in the future.

Takeaways from the course:

I think all the information from the course is important and usable in practice. However, what was most important for me was confirmation that we need information about patients not only regarding their previous radiotherapy treatments but also about chemotherapy, immunotherapy or other treatments that may have been used, in order to improve the outcomes of all the treatments for the patient.

Another takeaway for me was the possibility to recalculate the dose to achieve successful treatment even if there were interruptions, which is always a problem.

I believe that anyone who is connected to the radiotherapy treatment pathway would benefit from attendance at this course. It is really useful and maybe even necessary to understand all sides of radiotherapy, so that we can work together as a better team for the best possible outcome for all our patients. I hope that this is the goal of everyone in this field of medicine.

Daniela Lászlová

Medical physicist in training, Master’s degree

Military University Hospital Prague

Prague, Czech Republic

laszlova.daniela@uvn.cz

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