Like Her Fellow Volunteers, She Makes Time to Give Back
Rachel Jimenez, MD, has spent much of the past decade serving the radiation oncology field by working as an ABR volunteer.
Her colleagues are happy that she finds the time despite a busy professional schedule.
“She has great insight into the academic process and has brought this knowledge to the ABR as she advocates for residents and early career physicians,” said Michael Yunes, MD, the ABR’s associate executive director for radiation oncology (RO). “Her participation on advisory as well as exam creation committees has been irreplaceable. The ABR staff, other volunteers, and I enjoy working with her and appreciate that she continues to find time to be a great collaborator and colleague.”
Dr. Jimenez has helped the ABR for both Initial and Continuing Certification. She has written questions for candidates and diplomates, been an Angoff reviewer, and is now part of the RO Continuing Certification Advisory Committee and an oral examiner.
She volunteers while balancing the needs of her clinical duties at Massachusetts General Hospital and her associate professor position at Harvard Medical School. She makes her ABR work a priority when putting together her schedule and appreciates that the organization is mindful of its volunteers’ busy lives.
“I find volunteering really fun,” Dr. Jimenez said. “The ABR has been thoughtful and considerate of the schedules of the many providers who volunteer. I don’t find that volunteering is particularly onerous.”
In fact, she finds it educational. ABR committees are loaded with subject matter experts who take lessons picked up in meeting rooms back home to their jobs. Interacting with leaders in your field will do that.
“One of the reasons I enjoy the ABR so much is that I get a lot of gratification from learning and meeting people,” she said. “I also get to think about how we learn and what we should know to do our jobs better.”
Dr. Jimenez developed her interest in radiation oncology as a student at Harvard Medical School. She said the longitudinal nature of the specialty was appealing.
“When I was trying to decide within what discipline of cancer I wanted to practice, it was important that I had time with patients and that I had meaningful conversations with them,” she said. “But I also was very process oriented. Radiation oncology offered an ideal balance of being able to spend time with patients and families to get to know them and have the gratification of intervening in a meaningful way and to see the results in real time.”
She went on to train at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and was named chief resident for the 2014 class. During that time, she focused on learning about treating breast cancer patients.
It’s a field that requires the relationship-building that Dr. Jimenez values. The work often involves difficult conversations, but she’s happy to usually see positive results.
“I’m fortunate to practice in a field where most of our patients are cured of their cancer,” she said. “We get the pleasure of being optimistic for our patients because we know that their outcomes are likely to be very good.”
Dr. Jimenez relies on her work experience when she writes Online Longitudinal Assessment (OLA) questions. The platform was introduced to RO physicians in 2020 to help them satisfy Part 3 of Continuing Certification.
Her first-hand account of seeing OLA content being produced shows her that the system works, even when participants get questions wrong.
“I think the quality of the questions has improved,” she said. “That gives providers some confidence that if they aren’t answering them correctly, it is something they probably need to go back and understand better rather than just chalking it up to the idea that this is a niche question that won’t have any bearing on their day-to-day practice.”
Dr. Jimenez said OLA is a good evolution of the ABR’s Continuing Certification program, eliminating the need to take an exam every five years. There are many physicians and physicists who agree.
“Even if I know the answer, I can still learn something from the explanation,” she said of OLA. “It feels far more engaging than only thinking about (Continuing Certification) every five years. It’s just a vast improvement.”
Improvements that only can be made when people like Dr. Jimenez find time to give back.
