Passion is Infectious

An exclusive interview with radiation oncologist A/Prof David Kok

An educational video about stereotactic radiation therapy recently won a gold medal in The Telly Awards. Produced for the University of Melbourne, the video features A/Prof David Kok, radiation oncologist, who explains stereotactic radiation therapy, in an engaging and insightful way. Stereotactic radiation therapy is a highly advanced form of radiation therapy to treat cancer.

Easy to understand with ample animations and visuals, the video is a part of the development project of a cancer science degree at the University of Melbourne which aims to educate university students about the basics of radiation therapy. Driven by their huge passion, A/Prof Kok and Dr Sathana Dushyanthen co-developed the script for the video, ensuring that it captures what’s important about stereotactic radiation therapy compared to the conventional approach.

I’m extremely pleased that this video has received a Gold Award. It’s made for everyone to understand what’s the latest in technology advancement in radiation oncology space. It is a fascinating area where you can see a lot of technological enhancement happening and new enhancements for cancer treatment to improve cancer patient outcome.

The video stood out as one of the Gold Medallists in the General Training and Education Category of The Telly Awards 2022, followed by big-name runners-up including Microsoft.

We speak exclusively with A/Prof David Kok, a radiation oncologist who shares his passion for radiation oncology and cancer treatment and his behind-thescenes stories.

Why did you want to make a video about stereotactic radiation therapy? How did the idea of making this video come into being?

This video comes out of a larger project that I’m in charge of to develop a cancer science degree at the University of Melbourne. As far back as 2014, the university had identified that there was a surprising lack of knowledge about cancer treatment and wanted to devise an education program that could address that. I was brought on to lead the project in 2017, shortly after they agreed to partner with the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre to produce the degree. While the degree covers all cancer treatments, I think having a radiation oncologist in this lead role has helped to emphasise the key role we play in cancer treatment and allowed us to really highlight some of the key advances in radiation therapy that have been made in recent years.

In developing material for the degree, we were mindful throughout that we’re dealing with a professional clinical audience with a lot of experience in medical education, generally speaking. This type of audience is time poor, with 100 things on their to-do lists both in their business and personal lives. As such, we had to rethink how we made and delivered all of our content!

We decided it was really important to make short, sharp educational content that could be delivered flexibly, when and where people wanted it. After all, people rarely have time for one-hour lectures anymore! In addition, we wanted to make it really engaging to compete with all of the other distractors that are present these days. There are so many options—email, Netflix, family! That’s why we ended up focusing on short, simple, and engaging videos— like this one!

Who was this video made for when you had the idea of creating such a video? Was it for medical students at the university or general public?

Well, it’s essentially made for university students and also people from a health professional background. However, I’d like to say it’s for everyone because we make sure that any educational material produced is generalisable and jargon free so that anyone can understand it easily.

This video focuses on stereotactic radiation therapy, which is a relatively new, highly advanced technology in cancer treatment. It is a fascinating area where you can see a lot of new technological enhancement happening for cancer treatment to improve cancer patient outcomes.

What’s the purpose of this video? Would you like to inspire the university students to be interested in this profession or just build understanding of radiation therapy in general?

I think it’s both. I’m a radiation oncologist and I genuinely love the subject and the material. I personally find the delivery of radiation therapy really fascinating. There are all the technological advancements happening around in our field as well as all of their new different indications for cancer treatment. So, it’s about communicating that passion to an, as yet, undifferentiated group of professionals. And who knows, you may find people who share the same passion with you! All of a sudden, they realise radiation oncology is really interesting and want to learn more.

In addition, there’s also a big role for building knowledge of radiation therapy and literacy in the wider health professional community. We need to raise awareness of radiation therapy because a lot of people don’t even understand the basics of it. For instance, they don’t know when’s the right time to refer to radiation oncologists or to discuss their patients with us. And ultimately that lack of knowledge impacts patient care.

How long did it take you to produce this video?

It took roughly about a month. I did the initial script and then consulted others for feedback and inputs. I wanted to make sure that it included a range of opinions about what’s important about stereotactic radiation therapy. Once the script was finalised, I went to talk to the animators. Luckily, we have a very strong team for digital technology in the cancer science team who brought the idea into vision.

The Telly Awards are prestigious, and some of the winners are from big name companies. What made this video stand out to win the Gold Medal in your opinion?

I believe ultimately there are two things you really need in a good video: the first is the information presented is clear so people can understand it easily without paying too much effort.

The second is the passion behind it. You need to convey the passion. I personally love this subject, and you know passion is infectious. A part of it is that I’m just showing the fact that I love this material and here are the reasons why you should love it as well. When you’re passionate about something then people around you will feel it, and when these two things come together, you have the ingredients to make a video worth watching.

You’re a natural speaker in front of the camera. You communicate with your audience very well on the video. Can you explain why that is?

Thank you. In the past I did a teaching degree as well as medicine, so I have a little bit of theory about learning styles of students and how to get them engaged on screen. I suppose that bringing that lens to it gives you some insight into what’s the appropriate way of wording things so you can better present your information, and how to move between different types of aspects of the screen. Little things like whether the camera should be focused on the presenter or the content at a specific time.

All of those things have a subtle effect that is hard to measure but will make a difference to the ways your audience understands the information you’re presenting. But I won’t pretend I’m perfect either—every professional speaker I’ve met is constantly trying to watch how others do it and improve their technique, and I’m no different!

Do you have a behind-the-scenes story to share with us from the video shooting process?

I do have one that you might like! We actually wrote a full script for the video and had a teleprompter, so you know what you’re going to say in advance. But on the shooting day the teleprompter wasn’t working, so I actually had to just go on the fly. During the recording process, a few parts took a couple of takes, but now looking at the final video, I think it actually made it a better video, a more natural one.

At the end of the video, you encourage your audience to go for a Nobel Prize. Can you elaborate your message here?

I think it’s always important for students to understand that we’re not at the limits of knowledge. There are a lot of things to learn and in the next decade there will probably be further huge steps forward that are going to revolutionise what we do.

The section you’re referring to is where I showed some PET scans that demonstrate the interaction between radiation therapy and immunotherapy. From time to time, this results in a phenomenon where the radiation triggers a widespread tumour response outside of the radiation field. This is called the “Abscopal Effect”, and in my opinion is a huge frontier for cancer care. A better understanding and leveraging these types of biological interactions between radiation and cancer will really move us forwards as a specialty. I was hoping to explain this, and at the same time try and stimulate the viewers’ sense of excitement about where the field is going.

Do you have any words to students, radiation oncology trainees, and health professionals in general?

Radiation oncology is an amazing field which has so many different possibilities lying ahead of us. I think that they're only limited by firstly imagination and secondarily the drive and passion to do so.

I suppose I hope that my own passion within education will remind people of that and to look to the horizon. There are really big opportunities for our radiation oncology profession.