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: I'm taking ABR part 1 this week, and recently took the practice exam/technical check on the online interface. Where is the list of constants that were supposed to be provided? Does anyone know?
Response 1: There should be a link to a practice exam through the abr login thingy. It helps you see where everything is and how to move between questions and such. The actual questions are for medical students, but the interface is the same
Response 2: You will easily be able to locate it when you are in the interface for your actual exam.
Response 1: Thanks!
Response 3: That exam is also more related to the radiologist sections, it's doesn't relate too much to medphys, its really just to get to know the interface. For medphys sample questions you can find on the ABR website.
Response 4: On the ABR website under medical physics > initial certification there is a “constants and physical values” link on the left hand side
Response 2: Sorry, I meant in the exam interface itself.
Comment 2: I'm currently enrolled in B.Sc in Medical Physics course (with Co-op) in Canada. Before even getting Masters, do I have a chance of getting a job (part time/full time) ? Would working part time while studying for Masters be feasible ?
Response 1: You have so much to learn before anyone risks you harming a patient in the clinic that you have no chance of getting a physics job before you are fully trained. This might help https://comp-ocpm.ca/english/career-education/career-resources/career-resources.html
Response 2: Thanks for the answer
Comment 3: Is there a spreadsheet floating around anywhere that is tracking interviews from residency programs? I know there was one for matches, which I’d also appreciate the link to!
Response 1: Here you go.
Comment 4: What to expect on ABR part 1 exams? Lots of equations and calculations or mostly conceptual knowledge of physics and devices? On the clinical part, how much pathology should I know? I'm confident about my anatomy, but aside from tumors and other more commonly seen pathologies, I'm not the best at.
Response 1: Definitely know your basic equations (e.g. the Compton energy formula, radioactive decay, exponential attenuation, inverse square). However, nothing overly math heavy involved should appear on there. Definitely be sound on conceptual knowledge of med phys. You should know the dependencies of different photon interactions, such as how does the likelihood of a photoelectric interaction vary with Z, stuff like that. Definitely know your statistics, Poisson and just general statistics. I would recommend reviewing basic imaging stuff (all modalities, no need to dive in super heavy to radon transforms or imaging equations and such). But have a general idea of what affects image quality, etc.
Response 2: As far as the clinical portion goes, basic imaging anatomy is important. Pathology is kind of a crap shoot, it is definitely most important to know different tumor types and locations. Other stuff you can kind of reason through using process of elimination action. My advice is that medical terminology can get you a long way on the clinical portion (i.e., root words).
Response 3: Hope this helps a little and good luck!
Comment 5: Does anyone have experience with a job after their B.S in physics that is related to the medical field or radiation safety? This would be before pursuing med phys grad school. Do you mind saying what that job was? How did this help with pursuing further education in the medical field, etc?
Response 1: Radiation safety is a big part of health physics. You can start looking that up if that is something you're interested in.
Response 2: Okay, thank you!
Comment 6: How do you prepare for residency interviews? Do people usually ask behavioral or technical questions? I have my first one coming up in a few days and I would really appreciate any specific advice. Thanks!
Response 1: In my recent preliminary interview, I was asked these questions: Tell me about yourself? What have you found most difficult in your graduate program? Why did you choose this residency program? Hope this helps.
Response 2: Thank you. Mine ended up being somewhat similar.
Response 1: The phone interview I just had asked me very basic questions. Why are you interested in medical physics? Why are interested in diagnostic imaging or therapy? What does a medical physicist do? They will want you to ask questions during the interview (at appropriate times) look for some good questions. Also a lot of places are interested in learning if you are a normal interesting person that they want to share a workplace with. You can do mock interviews with other grad students, or with professors, check your student resources too. Have your friends or SO ask you questions.
Response 2: Thank you. I'll prep for those sorts of questions. My interview is in a few hours 😀
Response 3: 85% behavioral/fit questions, 15% technical. I used the career services office at my graduate institution to practice those "fit" questions and to practice my elevator pitches. I still had my notes from when I took the ABR part 1, and used those just to brush up on any technical areas. The majority of the "technical" questions were workflow specific questions (what would you do if x/y/z happened in your clinic). I didn't have a ton of clinical experience from my PhD so those were a little tougher.
Response 4: I ask technical questions but I don't expect the candidate to know a lot of them. They are very basic but a lot of grad schools expect you to learn these things in a residency. I don't know what you mean by behavioral questions, but sometimes I may ask something like, "If a QA fails what would you do?" Good questions to ask your interviewer: 1) What is your favorite responsibility in the clinic? 2) Where are the best places to eat in the city? 3) What meme from r/MedicalPhysicsMemes made you lol hardest?
Response 5: Thanks you so much for responding. What sorta technical questions do you like to ask? As in what materials should I review haha? Behavioral questions as in, tell me about a time you overcame a challenge working in a team, etc. Do people ask HR questions like that too?
Response 6: Some places may. I don’t. I ask questions about clinical physics. Nothing you need to study for. If they know it, good, if not, then they will learn it. I don’t care if they know the answer. Just want to see how they answer because about 1 year after the residency ends they’re going to be on the butcher block in front of the ABR getting blasted and they better do a damn good job because that reflects on me and I want to boast to all my friends that my resident was better than theirs then go get hammered at their DABR celebration party.
Response 7: Oh I love that feeling. In my grad program they had us seniors students teach the new students how to do PSQA, and then they would be evaluated for competency to allow them to run it alone. I took immense pride in getting my peers to pass competency and be really independent.
Response 8: Wow, that explains so much!
Comment 7: [deleted]
Response 1: I think the deadline to submit the application for the Match was December 12th. You can always look at off cycle residencies that don’t participate in the match.
Response 2: You are very late. However, if you can manage to find a few places in which you have missed the deadlines, and email the residency director, they may add you into their list if they haven't cut it down already. You will still need to apply through MPRAP but they will have to go in a get your application manually instead of the usual way of getting all the applications after their deadline has passed.
Response 3: The recommendation letters don't need to be on file when you click apply by the way. I don't know how worse of a chance you'd have without them but you can always email the programs when your recommendations are in. They are able to download the most updated application materials.
Response 4: Yes, you are late
Response 5: It seems you are a bit late, you can always try but there's only 13 therapy and 7 diagnostic openings right now (there were around 90 total a month ago). Also, there's only 14 programs that accepts Masters (idk if phD only programs would accept you as you are still working on it.) You can always try, but you have less than 3 days to submit an application with 3 letters of rec, so idk if that's even possible.
Response 6: Thanks for the insight. Where do you see the available residencies at?
Response 7: mp-rap, which is where you apply for the majority of residencies
Response 8: You’re def too late. Unless you have 3 recommendation letters from good sources on hand.
Comment 8: [deleted]
Response 1: The only case I can imagine is if you start a CAMPEP master program and apply to transfer to a new university before you graduate. The PhD university may require you to redo some course, but probably only because its weird you left a university before graduating.
Response 2: If you graduate with a CAMPEP degree, you have completed all those requirements. The PhD program would only ask you to take relevant course work for your dissertation and research.
Response 3: This will vary by institution, but I think that most if not all of your CAMPEP core courses will transfer over, so you won't have to do 2 years of classes all over again. Check with specific programs to see what they will take.
Response 4: Be aware that some programs require a more advanced anatomy & physiology course for PhD students than for masters. That seems like the most likely course difference.
Comment 9: I’m still a LONG time from being in the field of medical physics myself, but I had a question concerning the field. I’m seeing everywhere that healthcare places and hospitals are collapsing because the nurses and paid poorly and treated like shit, and that it’s leading to a super high turnover for nurses and more just keep coming in, et cetera. There are also a lot of strikes (and good, because so many nurses are severely underpaid and this pandemic has been fucking brutal for them).
What is the future of medical physics looking like, in 10 years or so? And if healthcare starts to collapse or reform, how will it change?
Response 1: I wouldn't be too worried about the future of physics. Truthfully most of us (therapy physics) work in an outpatient setting, so grueling work conditions are not the norm (most clinics are 8-5 sort of gigs). As someone who just landed a job, physics pay has remained reasonably good. As far as culture goes, perhaps I've been in a fortunate position. Our clinic only lost a couple therapists due to the institution's vaccine mandate, but that and new masking/cleaning procedures are the most notable hurdles we've faced.
Response 2: In the grand scheme of things, if there is large-scale health reform, it'll likely lead us to do more short-course treatments to increase patient throughput, which would need strong physics support. So I'd say we're in good shape on the radiaton therapy side.
Response 3: I see, thank you very much for the response!
Comment 10: I’m current an astrophysics undergrad and I can’t really find any information about the field of medical physics outside of this subreddit haha
Response 1: start with https://w3.aapm.org/medical_physicist/index.php
Original URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/MedicalPhysics/comments/rvss65/training_tuesday_weekly_thread_for_questions/