Post Content: The AAPM Working Group for Non-Clinical Professionals will be hosting three upcoming webinars about non-clinical medical physics careers. During the webinars, we want to address questions medical physicists have about non-clinical careers. Please post your questions here or private message them to me! No questions are too small or too big. If we can't answer them all during the webinars, we will use them for future events and/or AMAs. Thanks!
Comment 2: I would appreciate more visibility on the diagnostic side of industry. These discussions almost always hyper focus on therapy, specifically vendor related work.
Comment 3: What are the working hours and the lifestyle like?
Comment 4: It amazes me how much concentration even I still have on "The Salary", when the number becomes irrelevant (and diminishing returns thanks to the IRS) after a certain point, especially if you never have time off to use the money to the benefit of yourself or others...
Response 1: I wonder if it would be better to start talking in terms of a Quality Of Life Index rather than "salary", and I suppose this probably already exists somewhere...
Response 2: QOL = ∑i wi ki where
k1 = salary
k2 = vacation days
k3 = hours per week
k4 = working environment (e.g. do you have to wear a mask all day everyday because of the ~0% risk of COVID?)
k5 = team dynamic (toxic politics or friendly banter, etc)
k6 = location details (city, state, infrastructure, politics, etc)
Response 3: I am wondering how one even gets such information, particularly about your potential team members, before you actually commit to being there and finding out how people truly are...
Response 4: Even posting just k1-3 might seriously challenge clinic careers if people find vacation days and free time every week outweighs the increase in salary.
Response 4.1: Bold to claim that covid-19 has a ~0% risk. Particular as someone working in cancer healthcare, where there's a higher likelihood of immunocompromised patients.
Response 4.2: Mm. Obviously the details matter. Risk is a function of multiple variables. Forcing everyone without exception to wear a mask all day long regardless of context is comparable to wearing lead aprons everywhere because sometimes there's radiation and some people are exceptionally radiosensitive. Sometimes masks are appropriate, just as sometimes lead aprons are appropriate.
Response 4.3: Radiation isn't contagious... If everybody stops wearing masks in the clinic, what's to stop an outbreak from occurring and infecting patients as a consequence? The risk is there and measurable, period. It has a clinical impact and masks significantly reduce it. The data has been in for over a years now.
Response 4.4: And are you really arguing that a small (but measurable) increase in safety for patients is less important than the burden of simply wearing a cloth over your face? If taking every reasonable precaution for the sake of patient safety is so appalling to you, this is definitely not the right field for you.
Response 4.5: You're misrepresenting my argument, and you're bickering like someone who hasn't looked carefully at the science.
Comment 5: I'm doing my PhD in Medical Biophysics, without the accreditation, and a focus on MRIs. I know very little about non-clinical careers in this field...so I guess I'd want to know what's out there, what the lifestyles and pay are like, what types of skills are valued. Are these webinars free access? I'd love to see them.
Response 5: The webinars are free to access for AAPM members.
Comment 6: What differences in roles in industry would someone fresh out of a Master’s program in Medical Physics have compared to someone who has a few years of clinical experience / residency?
Comment 7: Couple of questions:
What does career progression look like in industry, and what are the skills that will help one to succeed?
Comment 8: I noticed there's a blog post on careers in science writing. How does one successfully pivot into that, and what kind of agencies have past medical physics graduates gone into?
Comment 9: Do you know anyone hiring right now? Haha but really...
Comment 10: How do you find these jobs? How well are they paid relative to standard clinical physicists? Are any of them remote?
Response 6: Thanks! We are going to cover some of this in the first webinar!
Response 7: Some initial information about salary can be found in these blog posts: https://aapmstsc.wordpress.com/
Comment 11: What other job examples are there besides research?
Response 8: Go work for a vendor who sells LINAC/TPS software. You can train new sites on the software, you could have a hand in creating new versions, you could travel, you could be in research, etc there are many positions to choose from.
Response 9: Also university academic route, be a professor etc.
Response 10: I am sure there are a plethora of others.
Response 11: Excellent! We are covering that in the first webinar! If you want to learn more now, here are some initial resources:
Blog posts: https://aapmstsc.wordpress.com/
Past presentations at AAPM: https://www.aapm.org/education/VL/default.asp?t=ByTitle&Title=career&submit=Submit
Original URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/MedicalPhysics/comments/wh4yfu/what_questions_do_you_have_about_nonclinical/
Comment 1: What kind of remote work is available for medical physicists?