Therapeutic radiographer at Bristol NHS Foundation Trust

The job at Bristol NHS Foundation Trust

Therapeutic radiographers plan and deliver radiotherapy to people with cancer. They take planning CT scans, mark and immobilise the patient, work with clinical oncologists and physicists to design the treatment plan, then deliver daily fractions on a linear accelerator, verifying position with imaging before each treatment. Because patients attend every weekday for several weeks, radiographers also assess and manage side effects, give information and emotional support, and run on-treatment review, pre-treatment and follow-up clinics. Adults and children having radiotherapy for cancer, and their families and carers, throughout planning, daily treatment, side-effect management and follow-up.

At an acute trust such as Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, that work means an acute hospital caseload — inpatients on the wards, emergency and critical care, theatres and diagnostics, and hospital outpatient clinics, with the working day shaped by admissions, ward rounds and discharge planning. Newly qualified posts here are usually rotational: four to six months at a time in a different clinical area, which is how you find out what you want to specialise in before you commit. Across the profession as a whole, therapeutic radiographers work in settings including NHS radiotherapy and oncology centre, linear accelerator treatment rooms, pre-treatment and CT planning units, brachytherapy suites and on-treatment review clinics — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Bristol NHS Foundation Trust pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in England pays it: £32,073 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in the South West was £37,195 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.