vision

[stoleyerscrubz]

In the Radiology forum I saw some posts discussing the need of good corrective vision for reading films. I read a post in the Rad oncology forum that there is film reading involved as well so I am wondering if the vision requirements are the same for both practices? Thanks.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Adawaal]

Well, my vision is about 20/500 bilaterally....

I would figure that pretty much no matter how bad your vision is you could get it corrected to something reasonable (lenses or laser correction). I guess someone who is legally blind (worse than 20/200 corrected or whatever the law says) would have trouble. However, the eye strain for us is substantially less than for the radiologists...

 

[The Doctor]

What about color vision? My colorblindness has already made me pass on pathology, hematology, and nuclear medicine - I'm also wary of other visually oriented fields such as dermatology and surgical specialties for fear of missing something like erythema and potentially harming a patient. Is color an important everyday factor in rad onc, and does histology play a role?

 

[Brim]

What about color vision? My colorblindness has already made me pass on pathology, hematology, and nuclear medicine - I'm also wary of other visually oriented fields such as dermatology and surgical specialties for fear of missing something like erythema and potentially harming a patient. Is color an important everyday factor in rad onc, and does histology play a role?

Largely, rad onc is a black&white world. Most of what we do involves looking at monochromatic images -- CT scans, X-rays, etc. However, there are a few areas where color is used, such as looking at a dose distribution for a plan and contouring tumors and normal organs. Any modern treatment planning system will let you choose your own color palette, so you can choose one that's most acceptable to you. There may be some minor difficulty at first ("Look at PTV1." "Which one's that?" "The GREEN one!"), but this shouldn't be a major obstacle.

In rad onc, the histology will be left up to the professionals.

 

[The Doctor]

Largely, rad onc is a black&white world ... In rad onc, the histology will be left up to the professionals.

Music to my ears! Thanks, Brim. I had suspected as much from what I've read, but it was good to get your real-world take.