Profile

Hi everyone! My name is Abbie and I am training to be a Medical Physicist working in Radiotherapy. I have lived in Devon my whole life and went to University in Bath – the South West is the best part of the country if you ask me. At the weekends, I like to watch my boyfriend play Rugby in Cornwall, or walk my dog on the coast. When it’s rainy, you can find me in the kitchen trying to bake cakes that even Paul Hollywood would approve of! When I was at school, I liked to sing and dance and we were even part of a show on the West End. I love to see amazing places in the world and hope to travel to New Zealand soon! Here are some photos that show something about me!

I went to University in Bath! One of my favourite places.

I got to go to the site of the Chernobyl Disaster and an observatory on a mountain in Tenerife when I was at university!

I have been to some other beautiful places with friends and family! But one of my favourites was:

And the smallest town in Austria (Hallstatt!)

And finally, here’s a picture of my family and dog after we walked up Pen y Fan, in Wales!

I am training to be a Medical Physicist! This means that I am always learning, just like everyone at school. A medical physicist has an important job in cancer treatment. If someone has cancer, they can be treated using radiation. The radiation beam comes from a big machine called a linear accelerator, and it looks like this:

This picture was taken from here: https://www.oncologysystems.com/blog/making-varian-linear-accelerator-vault-obi-board-imaging-ready

You can see the black table that the patient lies on. The machine then twists and turns around the person.

A big part of the physicists job is to make sure the machine is working and doing what it is supposed to be doing. We check this by testing different parts of the machine to make sure nothing is broken or almost breaking. One example of a test is the radiation output check. For this, what put a device which measures radiation on the table and turn the machine on. The beam from the machine is then measured and we can see how much radiation it is giving out. We compare the results to what we thought we should have measured, to see if it is right. If the test gives a wrong result, there could be something wrong with the machine that an engineer would have to fix! Checking the machine makes sure that every patient gets safe treatment that will help them.

Physicists sometimes help to plan the treatment – we plan how the machine will move around the patient to make sure all of the radiation is in the right place. First, the person will be scanned so we can see inside of their body! On this picture, a Doctor draws a ring around where they want the radiation to go. Then, the physicist plans the machine movements to shape the beam around this ring. The computer does lots of clever maths to help them make the bet plan!

Sometimes, if something isn’t working or doesn’t look right, a physicist will have to help solve the problem! This means lots of thinking and testing things to find the problem, and working with an engineer to try and fix it. Problem solving is a big part of a physics job.

Because I have a lot to see and learn as a trainee, my day is usually different all the time! So, I will tell you about a day I had last week.

I woke up quite early and had some toast for breakfast – I never go to work without breakfast! I got to the hospital and the machines were already turned on and ready for the day. All of the team had a chat to see what everyone was working on, and if anyone was stuck on a problem. Then, I spent the morning in the ‘mould room’. This is where people go to have special masks made just for them to wear when they get their treatment! The mask is made of a clever plastic which goes soft in warm water, so we can make it the perfect shape for the person’s face. Then, when it cools down it goes rock hard! This mask is to help make sure everyone gets the best treatment to help them feel better.

In the afternoon, after lunch, I went to see some patients get a scan! This takes a picture of the inside of their body, so we can see where everything is. Other physicists can then plan how to move the big treatment machines, so that the beam hits the right part of the person.

Before I finished for the day, I helped with some of the checks on the machines. These checks were making sure that the beam coming from the machine was the right shape and size. If something didn’t look right, maybe the big blocks of metal inside the machine were in the wrong place. Luckily, everything was perfect! So, I could go home on time and have a yummy dinner!