Medical Physicist

Roles and responsibilities

Medical physicists:

• Supervise the dose of radiation needed to treat cancer patients
• Help to plan complex radiotherapy treatment for individual patients
• Commission and perform acceptance testing of equipment
• Undertake equipment quality assurance programs
• Use their knowledge of radiation to monitor the radiation safety of patients and staff
• Tutor radiology registrars
• Perform shielding calculations and assessments
• Ensure compliance with radiation regulatory requirements
• Review research applications involving exposure of volunteers to ionising radiation
• Run radiation safety courses / talks / training
• Estimate doses in the case of accidental exposure to ionising radiation
• Provide foetal dose estimates and advice regarding exposure during pregnancy
• Carry out mathematical modelling
• Design transducers and electronic systems

Medical physicists are generally concerned with the application of physics to medical imaging and radiotherapy, although they may work in many other areas of healthcare.

Medical physicists are closely involved in the commissioning, calibration, safe operation and maintenance of medical systems used in radiotherapy treatment, nuclear medicine, x-ray scans, CT, mammography, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

A medical physics department may be based in either a hospital or a university and its work is likely to include research, technical development and clinical healthcare.

 Source: ACPSEM