• Question: Do you believe that medical physics is under-advertised?

    Asked by josiepaton to Jack on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Jack Miller

      Jack Miller answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Hi Josiepaton,

      Great question!

      I personally think that it’s slightly under-represented to the general public, quite well taken care of professionally, and often an afterthought in university courses. It’s a legal requirement for hospital radiology departments to have a full-time, qualified medical physicist working there, which is a good thing — there are a lot of subtleties in the field that I think are best left to someone who isn’t a doctor. That said, at the undergraduate level it’s often an afterthought, or mentioned in the style of “some of you might go and get jobs doing this”. Some schools also teach a fair chunk of things like X-rays (and I remember having a look at MRI when doing my A-levels), which I think is very important — everyone’s heard of CERN, but the vast majority of particle accelerators in the world are sitting in hospitals!

      — Jack

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