MD/PhD Medical Physics

[Hobodog]

I am curious if anyone has any suggestions on good medical schools which offer a medical physics related PhD opportunity (preferably in the therapy side (internal or external) but imaging is good too). I graduated with a BS in Engineering and a 3.11. I also obtained a two minors and finished 140 hours as an undergraduate in four years. I originally applied to a few medical schools during my fourth year but chose not to attend. I instead took the GRE (a V660 Q800) and entered a CAMPEP accredited Medical Physics master's program. In this program I will obtain 40 credits and write a thesis and will matriculate in December. In this program I am currently carrying a 3.65. I have a 35S MCAT (P12/V11/B12/S). I have researched under two different professors in my department (primarily computational). I also have a first authorship in Pediatric from work I did during the summer after my undergraduate.

During my MSMP program I have decided that I still want medicine and medical physics is no substitute. However I enjoy the research I am doing and would like to continue it. I am curious if anyone can provide suggestions for medical schools which might be able to offer a MD/PhD program along these lines (I am sure many can offer imaging programs).

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[Lil Mick]

I'm not exactly sure what medical physics is, but many schools offer biophysics as an area of study. If you want to go straight physics, I'd suggest UIC, U of Chicago, U of Florida, and Stanford. Those programs would allow you to apply to the physics department for your PhD. There are other schools that allow students to choose engineering, which might be a good fit, too.

 

[Ombret]

I doubt that you will find many PhD programs geared toward medical physics specifically. I would bet that the PhDs who enter medical physics residencies themselves usually have their PhD in general physics. But you might have a chance of finding a med school where the rad onc department has one or two faculty members who have a basic science appointment and could be PhD mentors, or where some of the physics faculty have collaborated with the medical physicists or rad oncs.

Maybe the best bet would be places that do have CAMPEP graduate programs (I guess your MS school is one) and also have strong MSTP. Looking at http://www.campep.org/campeplstgrad.asp, it looks like Columbia, Duke, U Chicago, Penn, Vandy might be some.

This is kind of a niche interest but would make a great case for you as an applicant in the midst of all the forgettable cell biology people.

 

[Werg]

I would look at UTHSCSA (San Antonio) for therapy or imaging and MCW (Milwaukee) might be a good place for imaging. MCW's degree is in "biophysics", but looks like it really straddles medical physics. Also they have top notch rad onc physics faculty, but no official therapy physics grad program.

I would follow Ombret's advice as far as looking at the lists of medical physics PhD programs and just trying to correlate them with MD/PhD programs.

There is a good chance that you will need to do some trailblazing (i.e. you might be the first student to do MD/PhD in medical physics there or in a very long time). I would not look strictly at MSTP or CAMPEP programs. Also, you may want to look out for programs that are more along the lines of "biomedical engineering", but have a strong imaging focus.

Some schools might not like the MD + medical physics PhD combo, because there might be almost no overlap in core courses for the PhD and MD. But since you'll already have your CAMPEP MS, you will probably be able to skip some of the PhD core courses.

 

[Werg]

I doubt that you will find many PhD programs geared toward medical physics specifically.

I'm kind of confused by your reply (the rest is below), but I'll mention that there are a few dozen (stand-alone) medical physics PhD programs.

I would bet that the PhDs who enter medical physics residencies themselves usually have their PhD in general physics. But you might have a chance of finding a med school where the rad onc department has one or two faculty members who have a basic science appointment and could be PhD mentors, or where some of the physics faculty have collaborated with the medical physicists or rad oncs.

Starting in 2014 they are requiring all medical physicists (PhD or MS) seeking ABR certification to go through a CAMPEP accredited medical physics residency (either radiation therapy, imaging, or nuc med). Up until a few years ago, most residents were people with PhD's in general physics who were transitioning into medical physics. They could also do "clinical post-docs". Now more and more people with medical physics degrees are applying to residencies (before the 2014 deadline), because the traditional clinical training positions have largely dried up in the recession. [Sorry a little off-topic detour.]

 

[Neuronix]

For those of you who are interested, I view this sort of like getting a PhD in clinical psychology and a MD to do Psychiatry residency. Medical physics, if I understand the training properly, is heavily geared to produce clinical physicists to support physicians and equipment in rad onc. They have their own separate residency training programs.

MD/PhD programs generally are not geared to produce clinical types of PhD, but rather research PhDs. You can try to do this medical physics pathway if you really find value in it, but the path of least resistance and equal applicability would be a PhD in biophysics or bioengineering within a physics/rad onc laboratory. Doing primarily bench/engineering/applied physics research in these departments during your PhD with publications and a thesis would gear you very well to going into a specialty like rad onc and be more palatable to MD/PhD PDs. There would be less overlap in the clinical training, and more emphasis on a primary research career, which is the training goal of MD/PhD programs.

Personal bias info: I did my PhD in MRI physics (biophysics department) and went into rad onc.

 

[Werg]

For those of you who are interested, I view this sort of like getting a PhD in clinical psychology and a MD to do Psychiatry residency. Medical physics, if I understand the training properly, is heavily geared to produce clinical physicists to support physicians and equipment in rad onc. They have their own separate residency training programs.

Medical physics is both a clinical and research field. It would not make sense in general to seek qualification as both a clinical medical physicist and a physician, but the research part of medical physics stands on its own. Several of the medical physicists I work with do no clinical work (including my advisor). Of course, most medical physicists spend a decent amount of time in the clinic, since it pays very well.

The clinical education in medical physics grad school is largely accomplished through rotations. I would imagine that if you were not planning on being a clinical physicist you could arrange to opt out of rotations. Additionally, there is a push in the field to concentrate the clinical training during residency, minimizing or removing it during grad school.

As an alternative for the OP, I would offer that having an MS+MD would provide more than enough background to do a lot of interesting research/clinical work...

 

[latte01]

I think it's ridiculous to pursue medical physics. When I look at the research that they try to do, I see how ill-trained and unprepared they are to compete with computer scientists, electrical engineers, and biostatisticians. I would not want to waste years of my time studying all these mathematical theorems on ionizing atoms, or memorizing nuclear medicine particles, or learning how an MRI or CT machine works, etc.... unless I want to teach medical physics to future radiology residents for their board examinations. But heck no. Radiology residents? Yuck. The extra physics degree is a waste of money and time. I'd rather be a computer scientist or electrical engineer and really make an impact on medicine via technology.

 

[PfNO22]

I'd rather be a computer scientist or electrical engineer and really make an impact on medicine via technology.

Your big blue text makes your BS much more credible.

 

[Neuronix]

I think it's ridiculous to pursue medical physics.

 

[Werg]

I think it's ridiculous to pursue medical physics. When I look at the research that they try to do, I see how ill-trained and unprepared they are to compete with computer scientists, electrical engineers, and biostatisticians.

I know this is a troll, but I'll respond anyway.

Obviously anyone could make the same (unfounded) statement about any of the above fields and just switch around the order. I work in two research groups on radiation therapy projects. One group is based in CS and I am one of two physicists there. The CS people are excellent at what they do. What they are not very good at is physics! One of my primary roles in that group is simulating radiation transport, dose calculations, and clinical sanity checks. Our group's CS strength is in optimization, but they would have an incredibly difficult time getting things published in radiation therapy, radiology, or medical physics journals without working closely with physicists.

Much of what is done in the medical world is by necessity cross-disciplinary. No one is going to be able to do everything well.

The other group I'm in has medical physicists, radiobiologists, and accelerator/particle physicists. Trust me, you don't what physicists doing biology (on the other hand if you're a biologist, don't get physicists started on experimental error quantification and data fitting).

I would not want to waste years of my time studying all these mathematical theorems on ionizing atoms, or memorizing nuclear medicine particles, or learning how an MRI or CT machine works, etc....

If it makes you feel better, our university's chief imaging physicist still doesn't know how to operate the MRI machines after 30 years and has to call in a tech every time...

But seriously, what latte01 wrote is a list of some of the things medical physics students learn about in their core courses. It's not as if chemistry 101 is a good overview your chem prof's current research.