Anyone who knows about medical physics?

[Alven]

Some one told me that top medical physics phd programs are UWisconsin, MD Anderson, Sloan Kettering. But I'm not sure which is the best one.

Actually I have a good opportunity to get an offer from MD Anderson, but I also favor wisconsin a lot. Are there any guys who can get me some advice?

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[johnmyson]

I'm looking for information on medical physics programs also. Wondering if there are any MD/PhD programs out there.

CAMPEP has a list of accredited programs:
http://www.campep.org/campeplstgrad.asp

Does anyone here have medical physics experience?

 

[Inuranic]

My school (Virginia Commonwealth) has a medical physics program that is supposedly open to the MD-PhD students. However, I was told by a faculty member that this is discouraged due to the fact that it's more applied research and not really hypothesis driven. I think one person (maybe) has done physics for their PhD, but don't quote me on that.

I do believe that if you have a background in physics and a put forth good enough reason to want to continue, they'd let you do it.

 

[Inuranic]

As for the other question -- yes, most of the research going on in medical physics/BME is more applied than basic, but I don't see MD/PhD programs discouraging their students from entering the engineering disciplines simply because the research isn't "hypothesis driven". In fact, my guess is that most programs would be happy you are doing applied research, since it is more in-line with the "translational" framework most MSTP's are espousing nowadays.

I would agree with you, however, faculty here are of the opinion that you only learn hypothesis driven research by doing it, and translational research is time consuming by its very nature. Therefore, the standard, basic science research is encouraged, with opportunity to participate in applied/translational research during your training, in the hopes that you don the physician-scientist mantle afterward.

 

[johnmyson]

So, I’m interested in working in a hospital setting, splitting my time between research and patient care planning (either in Therapeutic Radiological Physics or Diagnostic Medical Physics). Should I just stick with a medical physics PhD program, or would an MD-PhD give me more options for possible careers?

 

[jsydc]

I did my MSc in a CAMPEP accredited medical physics program and am starting up an MD-PhD in a few weeks, so I'll put in my two cents.
CAMPEP programs will introduce you to many aspects of clinical physics work and many are heavily integrated with the clinical setting, so you can get a good feel for how a physicist is involved in treatment planning and patient care. You'll hardly ever meet a patient directly as a physicist in North America, save for some rare complex cases, although you would be involved in patient management, dosimetry, planning, QA, commissioning equipment, and possibly radiation safety and some teaching in academic centers.

For me, I thought the career was limited in it's scope, many students do research tailored to a clinical physics environment. It's also a difficult field in which to make an academic career in as well, as most med phys grads end up doing 90% clinical work.

If you want to practice medicine, medical physics is not a substitute, it's a very different profession. You can make an excellent living and work reasonable hours as a physicist, but if you're starting at this stage of the game, there will soon be a clause that you need to have completed an accredited residency program in addition to either an MSc or PhD in medical physics to write the ABR certification exams. (I believe the cutoff is 2012, but could be wrong.) Which means you can tack on 2 years of medical physics residency after the PhD.
If you want to be a heavily research oriented clinical physicist, you will need the PhD (~4-6 years). Expect to also do a postdoc of anywhere from 3-5 years either before or after the residency (in the past it's typically been one or the other, I doubt that will be the case in 5 years, although this depends on the demands of the workforce). If you want to work mainly as a clinical physicist, you can still find jobs with an MSc alone (2yrs) in many parts of Canada and the US (excluding some major cities) or an MSc and residency (4yrs), (although this window may be closing) and the pay difference is quite small. (Do some research on areas your interested in working)

To do real independent research as a medical physicist takes almost as much time as the MD-PhD route. (This is the general outlook in the field at the moment, it used to be a much shorter route) Getting research grants as a medical physicist with solely clinical appointments can also be extremely challenging. (Far more so than for an MD or MD/PhD)

MD-PhD will definitely give more options, it took half my MSc for me to figure out I didn't want to be a clinical medical physicist, although I still want to incorporate elements of it into my future work. I suggest you try and meet some medical physicists and see if it's right for you. It's also a very challenging undertaking in and of itself.

So, unless you are truly dedicated to becoming a medical physicist. I would stick with the MD/PhD, where you will have much more freedom when it comes to doing research. Also much more flexibility in determining the nature of your clinical interactions and the scope of your research.

 

[jctobin]

Hello every1,
I am a graduate student in my last year Ph.D in particle accelerators, an interdisciplinary area of physics and engineering involving radiation (synchrotron radiation, coherent radiation, X-rays]. I am interested in pursuing radiation therapy. [E.g. proton therapy for cancer].
But here my question is more general. First, if I want to do a postdoc residency in medical physics from a accredited school, what should I do? My background is in engineering and physics. I looked into the schools and Ph.D in physics and closely related discipline is enough. I want to have people who are into medical physics residency program with Ph.D in high energy physics or any sub-field of physics guide me wrt to what will improve my chances of getting inside the postdoctoral residency program? What can I expect and what do the schools expect in a serious application? Please guide me.
Presumably, the postdoctoral program will lead either to a research or a clinical medical physicist position [which is what i am looking I mean a practicing medical physicist]. Great forum!!

 

[skyhike]

Hey jctobin,

I am in Physics PhD and interested in medical physics too. Since you wrote your last post three years ago, I am wondering what you ended up doing to switch to medical physics?

Thanks

 

[Werg]

Hi skyhike,

I doubt you're likely to get a response from jctobin, since that was a 3+ year-old thread. I'm a medical physicist currently in my clinical training phase so I will try to answer your question.

You can go into a medical physics residency with a PhD in physics or something closely related (e.g. nuclear engineering, some biomedical engineering degrees etc), but it's more difficult than in the past. Up until recently, medical physics residencies had essentially one function: allowing people with general physics backgrounds to gain clinical experience to become medical physicists. People who went to medical physics grad school rarely, if ever, went to residencies and instead would enter on-the-job training as a so-called "junior physicist", which would last three years.

Things have changed as of this year. If you want to enter the ABR board certification process, you need to either obtain a degree from an accredited program (that will not be an option after 2013) or enter a CAMPEP accredited residency. That means that all of the people who previously would not be competing for residency spots are now forced to (also combined with the bad economic climate, which has eliminated many, many entry level jobs). So the bad news is that it is much harder than previously to obtain a residency position due to massively increased competition. You may also need to do some leveling up, which would involve taking some classes before being admitted to the program. I'm not entirely clear on that. My understanding is that the job market is very good for board certified people right now.

As a side note, CAMPEP (and by extension AAPM and ABR) seems to be pushing to remove clinical training from grad school. When they came to review my program a few years ago, they recommended that our rotations be removed from the curriculum and replaced with more research time, despite the fact that the students and alumni unanimously told them that was the most valuable part of grad school training. I can only assume that this is to bolster the role of residencies as the "one, true" place where clinical skills are taught, but that's just my conjecture. As you might guess, the residency issue has been quite contentious.

What is not widely discussed is that ABR certification is not absolutely necessary to becoming a professional medical physicist. In many states, it is more of a resume point than a requirement. A handful of states require board certification for licensure or registration. On the other hand, the professional bodies (AAPM, ABR, etc) are pushing hard to make board certification an absolute requirement, so this may make the future difficult for anyone who's not certified.

 

[skyhike]

Werg-

Thank you for your response. I went to the a medical physicist who taught me a course before. He said I have two options with my Physics PhD degree. 1) Going to CAMPEP accredited residency or 2)Doing postdoc in medical physics. He said both options will qualify me to enter the board certification process. Is that true? Does a postoc in medical physics replace the residency training? Do you think it is a good option?

Thanks again