ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S4282

RTT - Service evaluation, quality assurance and risk management

ESTRO 2025

Conclusion: • Open days and prospective student visits to departments are the most impactful outreach and recruitment activities. • Create social media that can be used nationally by all HEI’s and departments. This will help with navigating strict social media protocols. • Promote the working hours, the job security and the job satisfaction as USP’s. • Focus on educating teachers and careers advisors to make a greater impact on promoting the profession. It is important to consider how these results could be extrapolated to evidence the use of outreach and recruitment for other oncology professionals. References: 1. J. Nightingale, T. Sevens, R. Appleyard, S. Campbell, M. Burton, Retention of radiographers in the NHS: Influencing factors across the career trajectory, Radiography, Volume 29, Issue 1, 2023, Pages 76-83, ISSN 1078-8174, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radi.2022.10.003. 2. Nightingale J, McNamara J, Posnett J. Challenges in recruitment and retention: Securing the therapeutic radiography workforce of the future. Radiography (Lond). 2019 Feb;25(1):1-3. doi: 10.1016/j.radi.2018.12.006. PMID: 30599822. Keywords: workforce recruitment outreach Mini-Oral Breaking Barriers: Patient-related factors impacting upon radiotherapy clinical trial enrolment Louise McHugh 1 , Lee Whiteside 1 , Philip Fendall Amaro 1 , Rachael Bailey 1 , Jacqui Bridge 1 , Lucy Davies 1 , Clare Hodgson 2 1 Radiotherapy, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom. 2 Clinical Outcomes and Data Unit, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom Purpose/Objective: Clinical trials (CT’s) are vital to ongoing advancements within radiotherapy, improving both treatment efficacy and tolerability. However, certain marginalised groups may experience barriers to research access, disadvantaging some patient groups whilst adversely impacting study recruitment rates. It’s important that equity of CT access is considered if research samples are to represent populations for which new treatments are intended. Material/Methods: Over 18 months, a 21-item survey was distributed within a large UK radiotherapy centre to identify patient preferences regarding CT information provision. This was augmented with questions designed to assess patient reasoning underpinning decisions to enrol or reject trial entry. Questions were largely tick box answers for ease of completion, with some questions allowing for multiple answers in order of preference. All questions provided free text space for relevant qualitative information. Respondents were recruited via random sampling for inclusion. Recorded demographic data regarded as important to the researchers were cross-referenced with the answers provided to ascertain trends, inclusive of gender, age and ethnicity domains. 657