Kathy Hopes reflects on 44 years of change in nuclear medicine

Chief nuclear medicine technologist at Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Foundation Trust (RUH) Kathy Hopes has retired after 44 years. She first joined RUH in 1980 to train as a radiographer. Here she looks back at her career and the changes she has witnessed during that time.

“I lived in Brighton with my parents and I wanted to train in radiography. I remember telling my parents I wanted to help people. I wasn’t clever enough to be a doctor and nursing wasn’t like it is today, but I loved science. My uncle and aunt lived near here, so I came to the RUH. In those days it wasn’t a degree, it was a diploma in the school of radiography. That was in 1980. Then I got a job in nuclear medicine in January 1984. You’d usually get a job in radiology but I spent two weeks in nuclear medicine as part of my training and really liked it, so I was lucky a job came up. In those days as a radiographer you were more of a button pusher, although of course that’s very different now, whereas in nuclear medicine you did your own injections, you were more autonomous and spent longer with patients.

“My first job was as a medical physics technician. I was pleased to have a job, and that it was something that I liked, but I used to see senior radiographers who had been here 20 or more years and thought I wasn’t going to be like that – I’d definitely move on. Then you get married, you settle down and you feel lucky to have a job you enjoy. In 1988 I became the chief technologist, but the department was very different then. There were just two members of staff; the person in charge and one other. Over the years we have expanded, including administrative staff and more technologists – now there are about 12 of us.

“The equipment has changed hugely too. We used manual gamma cameras with wet processing, so if your pictures got fogged you’d have to do it again. On a busy day we’d probably see six patients, whereas now it is more like 20. We would take the pictures and process them, and then someone else would report on them. It was mainly people with cancer, looking at their bones. We also did lots of brain scans looking for tumours and thyroid scans, which we don’t do any more. Later, CT and MRI came in, which changed the work a lot.

“In time we got dual-headed scanners where the patient was laid down and passed through. We used to do direct injections, and learnt a much wider variety of scans. Because I was younger, I took it all in my stride. And then, hybrid imaging came along where you do a nuclear medicine and CT scan at the same time to get better images.

“The other huge advancement was PETCT in 2016 and I insisted that the technologists be involved in that. It had been around in the NHS for a while, but it was new to the RUH. We are lucky for a hospital the size of ours to have that kind of facility. Some of the funding came from the Bath Cancer Unit Support Group and there was real thought for the design of the department. I went to Cardiff and Oxford to look at their departments and bring home lots of ideas. I feel like I was a huge part of getting that up and running.

“We are now in the Dyson Cancer Centre, which is very different after spending my entire career in C16. We saw plans and the building coming together and I am really pleased I was still here for the move.

“In terms of the work now, around 50 per cent of our care is for cancer patients, looking at bones and doing special scans to look for particular tumours. We also do lots of heart scans looking at blood flow, children’s kidney scans, eye scans, gastric studies to see how the stomach is emptying; it is a wider variety of patients and much more complex scans too. You absorb change as you go along and until you look back you don’t always realise how much things have changed. It’s incredible.

“I love this job, I enjoy the work and the people and I enjoy caring for patients – I’m particularly pleased I’ve been able to retain that element throughout my career. The people are what I’m going to miss, but I have applied to be a volunteer so I will be coming back.”

Read this report on page 15 of the February 2025 issue of RAD Magazine.

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