Synergy, newsletter empowering radiography professionals

Here, we report on the process of a highly impactful and successful creative, collaborative, and multi-partner public engagement project, Radiation Reveal. It brought together ten young adults aged 17–25-year-olds with experience of radiotherapy with researchers at Cancer Research UK RadNet City of London across three 2-hour online workshops. Here, we hope to inform and inspire people to help project the patient voice in all we do.

A radionuclide is an unstable atom. The stability (or rate of decay) of a radionuclide is measured in half-life. Half-life is the time taken for the sample’s activity to fall by half. Uranium-238 has the longest half-life of 4.5 billion years. Some radionuclides have half-lives of minutes, seconds, or even yoctoseconds - one trillionth of a trillionth of a second!

Atoms are the building blocks of all matter; they connect everything. Everything is made of atoms - even you! Atoms are the smallest particle of an element, which are far too small to see. Even the most powerful microscopes cannot visualise a single atom. In this activity you will learn that some atoms are radioactive, and are all around us!

The splitting of atoms, also known as nuclear fission, produces radiation and radioactivity. Dr Lise Meitner discovered how radioactivity could be produced in 1939. She found that firing a small particle called a neutron into another atom could cause radiation to be released. Radioactive atoms created in this way can be useful for detecting cancer or checking whether the body’s organs are working properly. When radioactive atoms are injected into the blood of a patient, they travel through the body and release radiation that can be detected using special cameras, creating images or videos of the body’s tissues. In this way, radiation helps doctors to better diagnose and treat patients. Unfortunately, Dr Meitner faced many obstacles and was never credited officially for her key discovery of nuclear fission.

Radiation Reveal is a creative and collaborative public engagement project. This multi-partnership project brought together 10 young adults (19-25) who had radiotherapy treatment for cancer with researchers who are part of the Cancer Research UK RadNet City of London. We worked with Centre of the Cell, a science education centre based at Queen Mary, University of London, to develop and deliver a series of 3 workshops.

These workshops allowed the young adults to share their stories while also connecting them with biology, physics and oncology radiation researchers. The researchers gained an understanding of patient experiences of cancer and treatment. The project also aimed to produce a resource to help future patients.