ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S2898

Interdiscplinary - Other

ESTRO 2024

Children welcome this project with pleasure, they would like to enter the treatment room again to ‘use’ the ‘spaceship’. They collect the stamps and are waiting for the medal. It helps the staff also because these well prepared patients have an initial knowledge about the treatment process so they stay calm and can cooperate better, in some cases anaesthesia is not needed.

Conclusion:

With this project, we can prepare children psychically for the radiotherapy treatment. Other centres also could make similar projects in their clinic to support the littlest patients.

This project was implemented with the support of the 'Richter Anna Prize'.

Keywords: paediatric radiotherapy, LEGO, charity

1153

Digital Poster

Burnout of health professionals in Radiation Oncology, MTUHC, Tirana, Albania

Orges Spahiu 1 , Alketa Çoku 2 , Roland Jorgo 1

1 Mother Teresa University Hospital Center, Radiation Therapy Unit, Tirana, Albania. 2 Mother Teresa University Hospital Center, Oncology Service, Tirana, Albania

Purpose/Objective:

Work is an important pillar of our life, a primary need, like identification, personality, and relationship with others. Professions in the field of medicine, despite the rapid development of technology, cannot avoid direct contact between the one who asks for help and the one who responds to this call for help. The constant contact with painful experiences, end of life, and the limitations of treatment deeply shock the people who work in such services as Oncology Hospitals. Many healers "live" with the stark reality of death, and this forces them to develop defensive strategies to cope with what is called the limit of life. The daily routine does not make this reality any less difficult. Different defensive strategies can range from excessive dedication to saving patients from death to opposite behaviors, such as irritation with patients and colleagues, aggressiveness, to the extreme of callousness and indifference.

This situation can be managed through group or individual psychological support, where the medical professional is aware of the need to work with this aspect of his work and person.

In the country context of Albania, professional burnout is not recognized deeply and there is no culture and practice of tackling this phenomenon. Thus, no medical professional providing cancer care was undertaking any measure to address personal and work burnout symptoms. Given these conditions, we took the initiative to address the burnout symptoms of cancer care providers of the Radiation Therapy Unit (RTU) to create a more tolerable and cooperative climate, among themselves and in relation to patients.