Not every facility has all three types of people, and those behind the curtain that we never see, are sometime one, two, or multiple people with different titles. While they are two different kinds of jobs, this is an issue of semantics when you look at it nationally. In some smaller institutions one person does the work of both job titles.
Bottom line a patient will never interact with these people and patients coming to the forum don't need to concern themselves with these individuals, as they do not interact with patients as a matter of routine, and we will never know or understand their job well enough to consider (scientifically ) what they do our how it might impact us, nor offer questions up to them that might change the direction of our treatments.
Suffice it to say there is a person who labors over your scans creating a computer map of what radiation, how intense, and of what duration and dispersion is going to hit you in all the right places. That person is a vital part of the working of it all. There is in every department in a cancer center an individual that see that equipment is in calibration, that proper protocols for the administration of things like radiation are being put in place and followed. Be it the radiation department or the pathology lab, there are oversight people who are ensuring that things are calibrated, state and national laws and procedures and protocols are being followed.
If someone really cares to dig into all this they should go here or have a conversation about it with their RO.
http://www.medicaldosimetry.org/generalinformation/medical_dosimetrist.cfmhttp://www.aapm.org/pubs/reports/rpt_38.pdfGoing into detail of what all these vitally important people do is beyond the scope of the forum, and what patients need to know to navigate to a good institution or understand the care they are going to receive.
If anyone is really interested I will post more links on what all these different people do. While it's all interesting, it isn't something that you can evaluate or have a really informed opinion about that would alter your treatments. If it was we would have put up articles about it in the radiation section of the main web site. The review of that section of the site was done by OCF board member Dr. Kian Ang, who up until his death not long ago was head of radiation oncology at MDACC.
