Academic Programs
Medical Residency
Mission
The mission of the Radiation Oncology Residency Program is to prepare residents for successful careers in academic medicine and private practice within a supportive, multidisciplinary environment. Residents gain broad clinical experience through hands‑on training, high‑volume procedures, and structured didactic education, with an emphasis on clinical judgment, collaboration, and lifelong learning.
The program also offers robust opportunities in research, including clinical trials, imaging, and physics‑based and laboratory investigations, for residents interested in becoming clinician‑investigators. Aligned with the mission of UC Davis Health, the residency is dedicated to advancing patient care, research, and innovation while serving diverse urban and rural communities throughout Northern California.
Program Aims
- Train highly educated residents with the required skill sets to succeed in the academic or private practice setting
- Provide a culturally and economically diverse training environment, including rural and urban undeserved
- Provide a strong academic and scholarly environment that enhances the quality of patient care
Rotations
Residents complete clinical rotations, training closely with dedicated attending physicians in a one‑on‑one, apprenticeship‑style model. These service‑based rotations emphasize hands‑on learning, progressive responsibility, and collaboration within a multidisciplinary care team. Residents play an integral role in clinical care and gain practical experience in treatment planning, physics, and dosimetry throughout their training.
Faculty radiation oncologists, medical physicists, and radiobiologists actively support resident education across the clinic, classroom, and laboratory. Residents regularly participate in tumor boards, conferences, presentations, and workshops, fostering clinical insight, communication skills, and professional growth within a collaborative academic environment.
Clinical Core Didactic Curriculum
The clinical core didactic curriculum has consistently been rated by former and existing residents as one of the strengths of the training program. Lectures are organized into six to eight-week didactic blocks focusing on a specific disease-site at a given time. Each of the clinical faculty members serve as moderators on a rotating basis depending on their area of expertise and are overwhelmingly committed to creating an interactive and educationally stimulating environment for trainees. Formal activities include instructional lectures, mortality and morbidity conferences, mock oral boards, case presentations and journal clubs. Additionally, the curriculum has been recently modified to include lectures on topics such as professionalism, bioethics, statistics, physician wellness and health economics.