Boosting awareness of radiotherapy careers

Attracting and retaining a highly engaged workforce is becoming more challenging for the NHS. East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust used a range of innovative engagement methods to help raise awareness of radiography roles and the academic routes to them.

The challenge

Within the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System (ICS), East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust are the only provider of Radiotherapy services and rely heavily on University of Suffolk (UoS) degree graduates for their future workforce.
In 2023 the Radiotherapy and Oncology degree programme at the University of Suffolk saw a significant reduction in applications and subsequently started the 2023/2024 academic 1st year cohort with just six students. This not only put the degree programme at risk of being closed but added to existing pressures to sustain this small and incredibly vital Allied Health Professional (AHP) workforce.

Action taken

Following the low student numbers in 2023, the Trust pulled together a variety of strategies, working in collaboration with teams and organisations including the University of Suffolk and the East of England Radiotherapy Network to deliver careers outreach activity specific to Therapeutic Radiography for local prospective students. This included:

– ESNEFT careers fairs
– Department open days on both sites (Ipswich and Colchester)
– AHP masterclasses where local school and college students rotate around masterclasses to experience bitesize learning and activities in each profession
– School events, including attendance at STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) weeks and assemblies
– Provision of work experience within the departments
– UoS also undertook additional careers and outreach work in the region.

Impact

These activities resulted in over 500 interactions with young people and the public. This September UoS have confirmed 15 have started year 1 of the course, a 150% increase. ESNEFT have had confirmation that eight of these students will undertake their practice learning here.

Nic Alexander, AHP Strategic Workforce Development Lead at ESNEFT says:
“A big thank you to all of those that have been involved in this, this a big step towards a sustainable workforce for radiotherapy”.

Next steps

The Trust is continuing to work in collaboration with internal teams, including the Talent for Care team and the Radiotherapy Departments, and with the local UoS to continue this level of activity in 2024.
The Trust are building on this further to offer a new work experience programme titled ‘Next AHP’ following on from success with the Trusts Next Medic programme, which will include awareness of and experience in Radiotherapy.

To find out more about radiotherapy roles visit the health careers website.

To find out more about the radiotherapy and oncology course visit the University of Suffolk website.