I am a resident in a major radiation oncology department in Switzerland.
I used to work in Germany before I came here a couple of years ago and I am currently in my fifth and final year of yesterday (one way to go actually!).
Residencies in Europe are less strictly structured as in the US. It's less of a training and more of a job. A lot is learned in learning by doing processes.
In the first 1,5 years of my residency I worked in the wards. I was responsible for about 10 patients per day, all of them receiving either combined radiochemo or being too sick for outpatient treatment.
Besides giving aggressive treatments in curative intentions, I also had the chance of learning palliative and end of life care. I actually enjoyed that a lot. I usually had to stay 3-4 nights per month in the hospital as the "on call" physician.
After those 1,5 years I was sent to clinic. I got to see new patients, talk to them about their treatment, develop a therapy scheme, organize stuff and see them for follow ups. Later on I rotated into treatment planning / simulation and I am currently on treatment planning one full day per week.
Between all that I rotated into "special" posts, like stereotactic body radiation therapy, brachytherapy, TBI and orthovolt therapy.
I've seen over 100 stereotactic body radiation therapy patients myself and performed over 150 brachytherapy sessions (mostly gynecologic). I'm looking forward to doing some Seeds too in the future and getting more insight into stereotactic brain radiotherapy.
Besides all that I got to teach too, given a couple of lectures, lots of seminars and bed side teaching over 2 semesters for medical students.
I try to visit as many tumour boards as possible and have become sort of an "expert" in some fields, which interest me the most, for radiation oncology questions.
That's about it.
Life as a resident is good here.
I usually work 8:00 to 18:30, although there are some days when I have to be here at 7:00 (TBI or linac maintennance). We get 45 min worth of lunch break and I usually have 2 x 15 min breaks for coffee in the morning and afternoon plus a couple of more breaks for surfing the net (like right now).
The schedule for the rest of the day today (it's 16:00 now):
1. Finish up a presentation for tomorrow's journal club.
2. Go to Lung Tumor board at 17:00, then switch over to Sarcoma Tumor board at 18:00.
3. Get home at around 19:00.
Research is optional in Europe, I personally only like clinical research and usually do some retrospective reviews for posters, presentations or small publications. I have also worked out 2 phase II clinical trials which are going to be (hopefully) activated soon.
