Loyalist College leaders, students, faculty, and donors cut the ribbon to officially open the new Medical Radiation Technology Program. Photo by Lindsey Harren.
Loyalist College officially unveiled the new Medical Radiation Technology Lab with leaders from across the local healthcare sector today.
The facility in the Kente building of the Belleville campus, offers hands-on learning for students in the College’s Medical Radiation Technologist program.
The program has been in high demand since in launched in the fall of 2024. With space for 35 students each cohort, the course for two-years, in six straight semesters. Students go on placement for their last year, before writing their licensing exams. The Lennox and Addington General Hospital in Napanee is one of several sites which has created an MRT Assistant position, which allows an opportunity for students, including those from Loyalist, employment in the imaging department to support patient flow prior to graduating. Examples of duties for placement students include helping patients go to and from clinical areas, handing out dressing gowns and going over instructions leading up to an appointment. The first cohort of students are set to graduate at the end of this year, and will be in the workforce by October. Giving students an opportunity to work in the department before this enables a smoother and more efficient transition to filling MRT vacancies in Hospitals.
The MRT program had a waitlist right at the start, and the waitlist has grown each year. This year the waitlist is over 400 people. The 35 students they accept per cohort is limited right now by placement locations. Students have supported by organizations in Kingston, Ottawa, and beyond. Aside from Loyalist, the next program like this is offered by Algonquin College, Fanshawe College, and McMaster University.
Just like registered nurses, radiation technologists are registered with College of Medical Radiation and Imaging Technologists of Ontario (CMRITO). Technologists become registered when they complete an accredited program like Loyalist, and write a Canada standardized licensing exam, apply to be licensed, and then must keep up with their training annually as technology shifts and changes.
The MRT Lab, located in the Northumberland Wing, has a reception area, two Siemens digital X-ray rooms, a digital portal X-Ray machine (which is used in the nursing lab) and a CT simulator controlled by a virtual software program. The space does have the capacity to add a CT Scanner in the future. The lab also has call bells to help train students in hospital/lab emergency protocols.
“You can’t apply radiation to a human without an order from a physician. So students are not X-rayed. We’re actually very protective that there is no one in the room, and there are no accidental exposures. The machines are all locked out, so you couldn’t {do a radiation backed image} without faculty in the room. What the students do, is they use the machines without the exposure on, and use our mannequin. They do all the steps up to the point of exposure in our positioning labs. We do have other labs on equipment and radiobiology where they do use the exposures on the phantoms (see through mannequins) when they are safely behind the leadwalls and out of the area. So they can see the effects of different doses of radiation on an inanimate objects,” said Erin Brown, VP of People, Services, and Strategy at Lennox and Addington County General Hospital, and Program Coordinator and Faculty at Loyalist College.
Students and faculty in the MRT Lab wear radiation dose monitors, which is an industry standard. The tags monitor exposure levels, and is sent off to a national body every three-months. There is also a radiation safety officer and a large amount of radiation safety offered in the course.
One of the X-Ray rooms in the MRT Lab / Lindsey Harren.
Stacey Daub, President and CEO of Quinte Health, was at the event today.
She said that when they approached Loyalist with the idea of the program, after getting the degree nursing program running, she was surprised how willing the Loyalist team was to take on the project and go through the hurdles.
Daub added that regional health care partners and the Parrott Foundation have been instrumental in making this a true local success story.
She said that across all of Quinte Health’s four hospitals, teams do 163,000 images a year. Numbers have been going up with an aging and growing population. Daub added that while Quinte Health has not had as many opened positions for radiation technologists, as in the past, more people are heading into retirement over the next few years.
Daub said that it is a career that needs a human-centered approach.
She added that having Quinte Health use the MRT Lab at Loyalist to expand patient access, is a future possibility.
Reception area /Lindsey Harren.
Looking into the MRT Lab room / Lindsey Harren.
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