<p>The focus of this qualitative exploratory case study was on clinical competence development for radiation therapists. The purpose of the qualitative research study was to explore and describe the perceptions of radiation therapists when integrating new technology while addressing safe cancer treatment delivery, clinical competency requirements for radiation therapists, and the influence of operational constraints. The case study research approach adopted in this dissertation included interviews and archival data review. Purposeful sampling was used to select 24 radiation therapy practitioners from Canada who participated in the research study interviews. Data analysis used Nvivo9 software and revealed five major themes (a) practitioner professional practice; (b) communication for change; (c) resources utilization; (d) patient safety; (e) practitioner training. The findings from this research provide evidence that practitioners working in British Columbia had a sense of professional pride. The findings included the practitioners’ perspective on how the integration of new technology influences their professional practice, the power of communication on the change process, the perceived consequence of resource utilization on patient safety and impact of constraint on practitioner training. The main conclusions drawn from this study are integration of new technology, changes radiation therapy professional practice iteratively and practitioners must focus on processes to integrate change safely within the resources by improving methods of communication within the interdisciplinary team and formalizing the education process. Recommendations fall into three broad headings of improve the process of communication, formalize the training process, and improve praxis through scheduling and increased consistency, based on the research questions. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3570765 |
| Date | 09 August 2013 |
| Creators | Mitchell, Fiona |
| Publisher | University of Phoenix |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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