Looking ahead: Proud to be a partner in discovery

I am now in a leadership role where my time is half administration and half clinical practice. The latter allows me to still test medical hypotheses through clinical research and to still see patients most days of the week, which I love. I got into oncology because of the connection with patients and would hate to lose that.

What I like about being in a leadership role is that I can contribute to improving the care for today and for tomorrow.  In my role, I help enable the oncologists’ abilities to deliver care and foster an environment that helps oncologists find improvements through research. This includes helping the BC Cancer Agency decide which radiation technology will be used. It is really quite exciting.

In 10 years, there are many things I hope we could be doing even better than we are today: I would love to see a better understanding of patient tolerance to radiation therapy and I believe imaging research will make this possible.

I believe we will have the ability to better tailor treatments to individual patient needs. We will also be better able to protect normal tissue around cancerous tumours.  These advancements will hopefully contribute to improved treatment effectiveness and reduction of temporary and long-term side effects that radiotherapy treatment can cause. I believe the BC Cancer Agency is already a leader in these research development areas and funding from the BC Cancer Foundation absolutely helps make these discoveries possible.

Thank you for following along.

Ross