Higher standards combat culture shock in medical physics

I can sympathize with Gregory Davis, who laments the new requirements for entering medical physics (Physics Today, March 2010, page 10 ), but there is another side to the story. I suffered culture shock when I entered the field from “pure” physics 20 years ago. I went from a world where the language of advanced mathematics was understood to one where few people knew what a cosine was and many (not the physicists, but most of the other hospital staff) had to struggle to recall the Pythagorean theorem. Conversely, my new colleagues talked with ease about anatomy, medical instruments, and medical procedure, while I felt lost and inept. It took the better part of a decade for me to really feel that I was in command of my subject.

The new requirements are an attempt to reduce that transition shock and to better prepare new entrants to the field. They may not be a perfect fix, but at least they are a start. The fact is, medical physics is far more medical than physics, and it will continue to move in that direction. I can see a day when medical physics will be considered a medical specialty and not a physics specialty at all.