Training Environment

The program takes advantage of the academic and clinical resources of Yale University School of Medicine, the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the state-of-the-art Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven Hospital to provide residents with a comprehensive clinical and academic training in all areas of radiation oncology physics.

The Smilow Cancer Hospital is a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the treatment of cancer throughout the state of Connecticut. In addition to the radiation oncology department, the facility contains 112 inpatient beds, 12 operating rooms, and 61 chemotherapy suites exclusively for the care of oncology patients. In addition to the main campus, the radiation oncology department maintains 5 satellite facilities throughout southern Connecticut.

Residents are full employees of Yale-New Haven Health (YNHH). Most of the training occurs at the main campus in New Haven, with occasional training opportunities at satellites.

The department and its affiliates currently house:

• 11 Varian linear accelerators
• 1 RefleXion X1 PET/CT-Linac
• 1 Gamma Knife® ICON (to be upgraded to Esprit in Fall 2024)
• 1 Precision X-Ray orthovoltage therapy unit
• 7 Philips CT simulators
• 3 HDR afterloaders from two major vendors
• Enterprise Eclipse treatment planning systems
• Enterprise Aria radiation oncology information management system
• Enterprise TotalQA quality assurance data management system
• MIM Maestro RT

The Radiation Physics Division has a wide array of radiation detection and measurement equipment for acceptance testing, commissioning, special radiation dosimetry and on-going quality assurance checks.

The radiation oncology department hosts training programs for radiation oncology residents, radiation therapists, oncology nurses, and dosimetrists. This multidisciplinary learning environment provides ample opportunities for learning from experts in each field and collaborations for research.

The Department of Therapeutic Radiology is the academic home of the medical physics program. The department is part of the Yale School of Medicine and is located across the street from the main medical center. The Department of Therapeutic Radiology houses dedicated lab space for medical physics research. Residents are given an affiliate appointment in the Yale School of Medicine which grants them access to all the resources of Yale University, including:

• Library access to the Yale University Library system, the second-largest academic library in North America, with approximately 12.5 million volumes housed in 20 buildings on campus
• Software and Computational Resources
• Yale University Shuttle System for transportation within New Haven