Sanjos

Age at interview: 38

Brief Outline:

Sanjos has been a research radiographer for six years. He has worked on studies about various cancers, including prostate and breast. He works in a team with mostly research nurses but feels strongly about his professional identity as a radiographer.

Background:

Sanjos is a research radiographer. He is married and has children. His ethnic background is Indian.

More about me...

Sanjos is a research radiographer. He enjoyed science from a young age and initially wanted to become a doctor; having a particular interest in cancer, he decided to pursue radiography. After training, he worked as a therapy radiographer in India for four years before moving to the UK and continuing in the profession for another 13 years. About six years ago, he moved into a research radiography post. He has worked on various clinical trials, including those about prostate and breast cancers. Sanjos found adapting to a research role quite straightforward. He received lots of training when he began his post, which gave him “a good idea about how to work in research and how to communicate with patients”. The training he undertook included on informed consent, communicating with patients on randomised control trials, and the principles of good clinical practice. However, one thing which surprised Sanjos when he began his role in research was having less contact with patients and this is something he misses.

In his research role, Sanjos screens patients and gives them information on the clinical trial. After consent is taken by himself or a colleague, he collects a patient’s medical information and samples. Whilst patients are undergoing treatment, Sanjos reviews them frequently to check if they are having any problems with toxicity, which is important as patients sometimes receive a different dose to that given in standard care. When patients have finished radiotherapy, Sanjos reviews them every few months to check again for toxicities. This monitoring continues on a long term basis, in order to assess the efficacy of treatment and rate of relapse. Sanjos has been involved with trials which have reduced the standard number of radiotherapy sessions patients receive, which has benefits for the patient and the NHS: “I feel really proud of being taking part in research like that”. 

Although Sanjos works on several different trials, he manages his time by working within a supportive team which also includes nurses and clinicians. Working in a small team allows for good communication, which Sanjos feels is a central in research. Sanjos’ line manager is a research nurse, which can make it difficult to communicate about specific issues in radiography. However, Sanjos values the level of trust between him and his manager which makes for “a good relationship”. In the past, Sanjos participated in a “radiography research community” where research radiographers would meet and discuss work in their areas. This was important to him: “I’ve been always called a clinical trials nurse… But I’m a radiographer so I’ve got my own professional identity”.  The research radiography networking group is no longer active, which Sanjos feels is “a shame”. 

Sanjos thinks that maintaining clinical skills is very important when working in research and he tries to keep up to date with the new techniques that are developing. For example, he attends training sessions, conferences or seminars to learn about new technologies in his field. He feels that this updated knowledge is “important” in case he is involved in related trials in the future. Sanjos also likes to share this knowledge with colleagues in his department.

Although Sanjos is not currently involved in designing studies or writing up and publishing findings, he hopes this will change in the future. He is currently doing an MSc in genomics, which may bring more opportunity to work on the academic side of clinical trials. Balancing his job with studying is a challenge, but Sanjos uses his free time to do this. Sanjos was inspired to study genomics as he believes genomic sequencing will be the future of medicine, leading to personalised treatment and improved patient outcomes. He hopes it will also improve treatment for patients in radiotherapy, as doses can be adjusted depending on genetic profiles and likely side-effects. Sanjos sees his future in genomics, either in sequencing or bioinformatics: “that will be my passion”. 

Sanjos, a research radiographer, gave an overview of his research activities.

In research, basically we deal with any patients who are, you know, put down for any radiotherapy clinical trials. We screen the patients, we see them in the clinic, we introduce the clinical trial to them and then once if they are happy with the clinical trial information then we consent patients to the trials. We collect all their baseline medical information, we put them onto clinical report forms, inform the study centre and, while they’re on radiotherapy treatment, we follow them up, we do a weekly review or two weekly reviews on patients to see how they are on the clinical trial with the radiotherapy treatment, how they are getting on. And obviously to make sure they’re absolutely fine with no problems and with the radiotherapy trials usually they are fine, they don’t-, it’s not a systematic treatment so they are absolutely normal most of them apart from sometimes they can have some skin toxicities mainly from radiotherapy but apart from that they’re usually okay.

And yeah, so review them. And also after they’re finished their radiotherapy treatment we follow them up regularly like three monthly or six monthly again to make sure there are any late toxicities of radiotherapy are still there and seen by clinicians as well, obviously.

Sanjos would first see the patient with a consultant who would explain the study. There would then be a separate opportunity to discuss it with the patient.

Because that is a good-, that basically makes a good relationship with the patient, that starts the good relationship with the patient because once they may have some other questions which they don’t want to ask the consultant but if it’s a specific consultant based question I would redirect it to them. Whereas if we can answer those questions, then we try and answer them with the patient when we separately talk to them in the clinic, which is a good idea so we go in-depth about trial, where the trial is coming from, more about the background about the trial and how the patients benefited from it and what are the-, with regards to benefits and, you know, non-benefits about the trials. Which is quite good because the patients want to know everything before they sign up for the trials, so obviously quite a lot of shared decision-making, informed consent, you know, informed decisions about the patient wanting to enter into the particular trial. Sometimes it can be quite complex-, complicated for the patient to ask the consultant of the time and date of such studies so they depend on us to, because we are the specialist research radiographers, we can go through a little bit more. We can spend our time more with the patient to discuss the study more.
Which actually helps the patient and also for our own professional, you know, betterment as well, it’s good.

Sanjos encouraged radiographers considering research jobs to maintain their clinical knowledge and skills – although he felt this depended on the opportunities available at different hospitals.

Well my key message to a radiographer who would be involved in research, please do not lose your clinical skills and at the same time if you are going to be working in clinical research that is my main message. Because I think working clinically in radiotherapy, as a radiographer is, you know, you always keep up your skills but you don’t wait to lose that just because you are becoming a research radiographer. And I think that’s my key message.

And I think that’s what I felt during my career but, you know, obviously that’s to do with the-, whether you become busy or not, you need to still keep up with your clinical skills in line with the research skills.

Do you have any sort of tips or bits of advice for how to do that?

[Laughs] It depends on where you are actually working so it can be in a-, if you’re in a university hospital, in a big hospital, then it’s quite easy to liaise with the, you know, people research in radiotherapy and they’re quite usually quite good with accommodating you with the research and at the same time working on treatment floor. Whereas in a, you know, hospital or a small hospital it can be difficult so I think that’s my honest opinion, so it depends. So where you work basically and whether you are working on a radiotherapy under the-, under the radiotherapy radiographer then obviously quite easy to obviously, you know, work with the trials department as well. So yeah, I think that’s my key message [laughs].