A special report of current state of the medical physicist workforce - results of the 2012 ASTRO Comprehensive Workforce Study.

The medical physics profession is undergoing significant changes. Starting in 2014, candidates registering for certification exams by the American Board of Radiology must have completed a CAMPEP-accredited residency. This requirement, along with tightened state regulations, uncertainty in future reimbursement, and a stronger emphasis on board certification, have raised questions concerning the state of the medical physics workforce and its ability to adapt to changing requirements. In 2012, ASTRO conducted a workforce study of the comprehensive field of radiation oncology. This article reviews the findings of the medical physics section of the study, including age and gender distribution, educational background, workload, and primary work setting. We also report on job satisfaction, the perceived supply and demand of medical physicists, and the medical physicists' main concerns pertaining to patient safety and quality assurance.

Automating the initial physics chart checking process.

The initial physics chart check, an essential quality assurance process, verifies that the physician intent is properly expressed in the treatment plan, the treatment plan is reasonable, and the Record and Verify (RV) system properly captures the plan parameters. In this work the process was automated by characterizing the initial physics chart check as a universal set of steps, compartmentalized into intra-plan and inter-plan reviews. The intra-plan review confirms the diagnosis-prescription-plan correlation, and verifies transfer accuracy of the signed treatment plan parameters into the RV system. The inter-plan review tabulates all RV parameters for similar cases, and highlights outliers. The tabulation of RV parameters for similar cases enables a summation of experience across staff members, and facilitates a comparison using the Statistical Process Control (SPC) formalism. A summary sheet, added to each reviewed chart, automatically documents deviations noted during the review process. Forty-five patient charts were analyzed using the software. The length of time for the entire initial chart-checking process was reduced from about an hour to a few minutes. The code developed in this work allows the user to consider the big picture, trusting the software to track details.