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.
Comment 1: Do any of you know if there are online PhD programs for medical physics? If so, what does their funding situation look like for remote students? I will have my masters from a CAMPEP accredited school after this year and plan to go on to residency after for therapeutic physics, but would still like to work towards a PhD when I'm out working in the field after residency. Any help/knowledge would be greatly appreciated!
Response 1: Taking on a PhD while working full time is going to be pretty demanding and stressful even under good conditions. You're essentially taking on a second full time job with the PhD.
Response 2: If you know you want to pursue a PhD after you've started working, you'll want to tailor your job search so that you end up at a place where the people you work for and with will support your plan (schedule flexibility, project ideas/support, etc) and have access to a place where you can do a PhD.
Comment 2: LSU and UK are some top dogs for placement. That’s all you really need to care about.
Response 1: Residency. Match. Rate. Period.
Response 2: Where can one see this? Is there a centralized link?
Comment 3: Every campep school has to publish their numbers. Idk if there’s any composition
Comment 4: Didn’t matter one damn bit last year to 90% of the places I interviewed at.
Comment 5: I am a physics PhD specializing in accelerator physics, I have taken a couple of biophysics courses that piqued my interest in medical physics After some research, it looks like my only option is to go with a CAMPEP certificate. My question is, would this make me a competitive enough candidate to land a residency?
Response 1: Is your interest strictly in clinical physics? There are medical physics careers in research (academic/industrial) that wouldn't require a residency too.
Response 2: It's hard to say. Most people I see with a CAMPEP certificate have also done a Postdoc within medical physics and have a publication or two to their name, and have presented at AAPM.
Response 3: It's doable with just the certificate? But you need to have had a pretty solid PhD.
Comment 6: When should a second year resident start seriously looking at jobs? Now? Later this fall? Yesterday?! I've been seeing some job postings go up but I'm worried it's still a little early to begin the search.
Response 1: I think a year out is a little early for a specific posting, but if there's specific departments you are interested in, I think it's fine to reach out now. They might tell you they have no openings, or might say "we're expecting openings in XXX months, please apply then".
Response 2: I applied to jobs in the fall. I submitted one application in early September, and was at their facility interviewing in person right before Thanksgiving. The job I ended up taking, I was interviewing in mid December. My senior resident had a similar timeline.
Comment 7: US resident here. During grad school I knew of a couple individuals who took internships with either a government funded agency (US or IAEA) or a private company like Varian. Internships are less common than in other disciplines, but they are out there if you look for them. Most/nearly all of my graduate cohort didn't take one. I suppose we all took a break before grad school worked us hard!
Response 1: [deleted]
Response 2: I finished undergrad in April then started grad school in August. I did not do anything specific between except secure the loans required for the program and move to a new city/state. I made sure to complete as many of the prereq courses as possible in undergrad so I would not have to pay out of state tuition for them during grad school (anatomy, computer programming, etc.) If you haven't completed those types of courses, it may be a good (and cheaper) idea to do them in your home state or a community college in the summer between. Just make sure your grad program would accept them.
Response 3: That being said... I would highly suggest taking a break and enjoying the time between unless there is more than just several months between. This will likely be your longest break from school/work until you retire.
Response 4: That's hard to say. At least among my cohort, most came directly from an undergraduate physics/engineering program, so with only a 2-month gap anyway. I personally did some extra research as a summer gig. Just depends on what is available to you.
Comment 8: What does the “medical physics 3.0 project” imply for the type of tasks medical physicist do in the future? Does it get farther from the physics side of it to the more medical/patient care side?
Response 1: Think of it more like bringing our medical physics knowledge closer to the patient care side.
Response 2: The medical physics-patient consult program at UCSD and a few other institutions is a good example of one aspect of MP3.0.
Response 3: If you haven't already, go through the material at https://w3.aapm.org/medphys30/index.php to get a better idea of what it's all about.
Original URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/MedicalPhysics/comments/oskmxb/training_tuesday_weekly_thread_for_questions/