Hi

Just trying to get a sense of how much work from home opportunity exists in the field in the post-pandemic world. I don’t think it’s much of a secret or a contentious statement that a lot of our work doesn’t require physical presence in the clinic, and in many ways I feel this can and should become a way for clinics to compete for talent.

How much off site work does your clinic allow? What is the size of the physics team? Have you kept any remote work post-COVID? Has doing so (or not doing so) required your clinic to revise (or choose not to) any policies about what procedures are and aren’t personally overseen by a physicist? Are you finding that attitudes about this vary generationally? Any other thoughts on the matter?

Here's the reality: CT technologists across the country are working alone in departments, managing multiple
scanners, emergency cases, and critically ill patients all at once. When something goes wrong-and it will—there's often no one there to help.
I started a petition asking the American College of Radiology to establish clearer staffing recommendations that actually account for patient safety. Right now, many hospitals staff CT departments based on how many patients they can process, not on what patients actually need. One technologist handling a confused or elderly patient, managing transfers, administering contrast, AND responding to emergencies while another scanner sits waiting? That's not efficiency.
That's a disaster waiting to happen....

With Pinnacle finally dying in 72 days, I’m trying to figure out how much of the US Reddit market is being spread out. Just pick the one you use currently not necessarily the ones you wished admin purchased instead. Feel free to comment below what you like/don’t like and complain about them all. It’s a safe space.

I have noticed that the dress code for physicists participating in TRUS-based real-time planning prostate brachytherapy varies from hospital to hospital. What do you wear during the procedure?: Full surgical attire used exclusively for that? Regular scrubs? Disposable gowns over regular clothes?

Hello Fellows,

Hope you all doing well. By any chance is there any Thai Physicists here?

I completed CAMPEP accredited residency in 2018 in the Midwest. I worked 60-70 hrs/week (probably more if I actually add up the hours). There is a 10 year age gap between new residents and when I was a resident.

See page 200 and page 210 in their linked guidelines.

Hi, how are people who want to go in to dosimetry supposed to gain shadowing opportunities when everyone works remotely? Most programs require 40hours of shadowing yet not only is it impossible to track anyone down, once you do they all work remotely and can’t allow you to gain any shadowing hours.

Edit: I’m in Utah, was able to find one person to shadow so far but her hospital limits it to only 3 days or 12hours. She gave me contacts for two other people but I am not sure if they will be able to have me shadow them.

Hi! I'm currently a second year undergraduate student working on my BS in physics, hoping to maybe go into an MS in medical physics later. I'm trying to make myself stand out as I know things are all competitive.

I went to a general advising session today and he briefly said that nuclear science is a good minor if you're interested in medical physics. there wasn't a single biology class in the class requires to declare that minor, so i'm wondering if knowledge about A&P would even be useful?

(or if there are other more useful minors, such as biochem, cs, etc)

Does anyone have a good reference for images of grid artifacts?

I'm thinking grid misaligned, bucky not moving, plate inverted or flipped, and etc?

This is the place to ask questions about graduate school, training programs, or general basic career topics. If you are just learning about the field and want to know if it is something you should explore, this thread is probably the correct place for those first few questions on your mind.

Examples:

• "I majored in Surf Science and Technology in undergrad, is Medical Physics right for me?"
• "I can't decide between Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics..."
• "Do Medical Physicists get free CT scans for life?"
• "Masters vs. PhD"
• "How do I prepare for Residency interviews?"

Hello,

I’m an RTT and this situation keeps popping into my head and I wanted to ask about it here. Earlier this week I came in as the second person for warm ups (one at 5:30, I’m in at 6) and one of our physicists was there with a survey meter. He said he was measuring the exposure at our console because they were worried about insufficient shielding when the treatment machine next to us beams on. He was on the phone with the therapist at that machine and when she beamed on, he used the meter around our control console at the driver’s seat. I saw the reading range from 50-70 but could not see the unit it was measuring in. He did not make any comments about it and left. Later in the day I asked him if the shielding was ok and he said it was. Obviously I’m not the expert in this regard, but it felt kind of unofficial and a weird way for this to go about. Why are we all of a sudden concerned about this shielding when we’ve been treating with it for years? And why do this testing with more people present than I’d assume there should be if there’s a concern about exposure? I heard no other word of this, no heads up from our chief therapist or any other physics staff. I’m also curious what unit this survey instrument measures in? Would anyone here know? My apologies for not knowing the specific device as I’m sure they’re all different. It just struck me as odd. Any thoughts would be appreciated! We did just get our OSLDs collected so… I guess soon we will see if there was really an issue.

Edit: Thank you all for the information! Firstly I am a new grad who has only been working for a few months, so I felt bad questioning the man about his rationale as he seemed to be in a rush at that moment. I also did assume that it’s very likely to be fine if he left with no other comment. Curiosity just got the best of me! What slightly worried me was that I thought I had seen the unit listed as mR on what looked to be the same kind of meter at a different site while I was a student. Now I know my bad eyes probably deceived me and instead of reading milli Roentgen, it was micro Roentgen. Now I know it’s micro Roentgen, which makes it a lot less concerning of a number :)

For any of the medical physicists in radiation oncology

Third delivery of an HDR Iridium bucket and the carrier holds it against their chest from truck to department, now stacking Y-90 boxes on top like it's a balancing competition.

This time our physicist was stern with them that they really need to use the dolly. Unfortunately they were training other drivers with them so this was especially frustrating. They assured us that if it was that hot it wouldn't be on the truck. FedEx local route supervisor had no interest in hearing our thoughts, again fully dismissive to every regulation.

FedEx corporate complain line is a joke, state regulators unsure what to do but agree it is not acceptable, agreement state so then i guess DOT or possibly OSHA?

Honestly would rather not even get involved but technically FedEx drivers are considered members of the public as they do not undergo annual safety training.

Surface dose rates could easily yield 2mR of exposure in less than an hour.

Any surface contamination is also going to cause a nightmare for everyone involved.

Anyone seen such nonsense before?

I am planning to take Rex Ayers’ oral board prep course starting this October to prepare for the February 2027 exam. If anyone is looking for a study partner to go through the course together, please reach out to me.

Our go.Sim saves Daily/Monthly QA reports as PDFs locally. It runs on the Siemens local account (not domain-joined), with no network drive access, and USB isn't an option for us.

Has anyone set up export to a network share? Was it done by Siemens/your service vendor, and what did IT need to provide? Or do you send QA as DICOM to PACS/TPS instead?

Thanks!

Is there objectively a recommendation for smoothing filter for PDDs? Using SNC 3D. Currently using Geometric 5 Point average. But…

...and it just feels, well to put it blatantly, sexist in nature. I have tried to find articles or discussions online about it, but to no avail. We have recently started learning mammography in diagnostic physics, and everything about it seems so strange. The lack of comfort or it all - both the procedure and the way it is talked about. Plus to find out that it is so heavily regulated by the FDA (a predominantly male organisation when considering higher leadership roles. I am aware that the FDA has slightly more female employees in total). The whole thing seems so off. I just wanted to get others' thoughts on the topic!

TG263 provided naming conventions for structures. Anything similar for plans and field names?

Greetings medical physicists of reddit. Has anyone encountered a display issue with SNC Patient software in which the isodose lines in the measured pane cannot be displayed? The data is acquired, it can be shown in tabular form, it can be compared to a plan file, and analysis can be printed. However, the dose line display cannot be shown. The screen capture attached shows the measured profile and set1 and set2 panels show nonsense. This is typical of the problem. The PC is running Win11.

I have attempted uninstalling and reinstalling and will follow up with Sun Nuclear tomorrow. I had run into this at another clinic and Sun Nuclear was unable to resolve this in the past. Does anyone know how to fix this?

This is the place to ask questions about graduate school, training programs, or general basic career topics. If you are just learning about the field and want to know if it is something you should explore, this thread is probably the correct place for those first few questions on your mind.

Examples:

• "I majored in Surf Science and Technology in undergrad, is Medical Physics right for me?"
• "I can't decide between Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics..."
• "Do Medical Physicists get free CT scans for life?"
• "Masters vs. PhD"
• "How do I prepare for Residency interviews?"

Greetings medical physicists of reddit. Has anyone encountered a display issue with SNC Patient software in which the isodose lines in the measured pane cannot be displayed? The data is acquired, it can be shown in tabular form, and it can be compared to a plan file and printed. However, the dose line display cannot be shown. In the screen capture attached, I have shown a measured profile and the set1 and set2 panels show nonsense. This is typical of the problem. The PC is running Win11.

I have attempted uninstalling and reinstalling and will followup with Sun Nuclear tomorrow. I had run into this at another clinic and Sun Nuclear was unable to resolve this in the past. Does anyone know how to fix this?