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2022-12-20_12-00-08_zqmkjz_cg.html
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<title>[Training Tuesday] - Weekly thread for questions about grad school, residency, and general career topics 12/20/2022</title>
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<h1>[Training Tuesday] - Weekly thread for questions about grad school, residency, and general career topics 12/20/2022</h1>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Examples:</h2>
<ul>
<li>"I majored in Surf Science and Technology in undergrad, is Medical Physics right for me?"</li>
<li>"I can't decide between Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics..."</li>
<li>"Do Medical Physicists get free CT scans for life?"</li>
<li>"Masters vs. PhD"</li>
<li>"How do I prepare for Residency interviews?"</li>
</ul>
<h2>Comments:</h2>
<h3>Comment 1:</h3>
<p>Would you recommend medical physics for someone who’s stuck between choosing studying physics or medicine?</p>
<p>Response 1:</p>
<p>Some context helps. Where is the individual in their education/career? Do they have any job experience in either field?</p>
<p>Response 2:</p>
<p>The individual is in their last year of high school.</p>
<p>Response 3:</p>
<p>My honest advice to the individual is to enjoy the rest of high school, and not worry too much about choosing a career at this point. They have years to figure that out, most of the time people post here in their last year of undergrad, not high school, but a lot of people get into Medical Physics from different fields altogether. They should keep an eye out for interesting classes and internships/research experiences; shadow doctors to see if medicine is something they want (it's not for everyone).</p>
<p>Response 4:</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice.</p>
<h3>Comment 2:</h3>
<p>Anyone here ever been asked to get ACLS for their position? I'm pretty sure the answer will be "what no of course not," but if anyone has I'd be interested to know. No particular reason.</p>
<p>Response 1:</p>
<p>Yes. I had to do it for residency. All employees of the Healthcare system had to have it.</p>
<p>Response 2:</p>
<p>Wow. Defibrillator and airway and everything? I'm pretty used to BLS for everyone, but ACLS for everyone seems a little excessive.</p>
<h3>Comment 3:</h3>
<p>Hi guys, I recently just found about this master's degree program since our professor sent out an invitation to apply for the master's program. I double majored in electrical engineering and physics in my school, and so far, I'm trying to decide if I should go for my master's in EE or just do medical physics instead since it seems that the pay is more appealing. I think though, that it only becomes more appealing IF after the program, one lands a residency in radiology oncology. I got curious and found that schools are graduating more MS in this field that there are residency slots...and its evident when one looks at places that offers residency...they're getting 50 to 100 applicants for 1 slot. I'm looking at schools near me, and saw that most of the people who scored the residency are Ph.D with a couple of published papers under their belt....i'm not afraid of a challenge, but I've always been the "worst case scenario" guy. When I do get the degree, which I think is very doable...what are the options when I don't get the residency--which I think, looking at the numbers, is very likely even with an above average gpa...</p>
<p>Response 1:</p>
<p>In addition to MPA positions like previously mentioned, I also know a few students who didn’t match do a 1-year gap year for medical physics research before reapplying for residencies the following application cycle.</p>
<p>Response 2:</p>
<p>The expected salary of people with a medical physics degree and no residency is tricky to quantify. The AAPM’s salary survey has a component measuring a master's degree with no certification, but it looks like they include people who have completed residency, but have simply not passed the ABR part 3. So, this would not answer your question well. Additionally, many MS students find positions in industry, but since you mentioned an interest in radiation oncology, I’ll focus my answer around that.</p>
<p>I am an MS degree holder who did not match in my first attempt through the match. In these cases, MPA (medical physicist assistant) positions and junior physicist positions would be the next appropriate career for a clinical-oriented physicist. Anecdotally, the salaries I saw and was offered were between 40k and 60k for an MPA, and the junior physicist positions started much higher between 75K and 120K. Their did not seem to be much difference in responsibility between the two positions, however, the junior physicist positions were looking for someone who was going to stay longer than ~2 years, I believe with the idea of the junior physicist getting state licensure and working under a DABR for anything they were not qualified for while the MPA positions seemed be more willing accept that the MPA would re-enter the match the following year (In some cases, a pathway to residency was actually built into the MPA position which could be an alternative route as well).</p>
<p>As for the concern about the likelihood of matching, the Society of Directors of Academic Medical Physics Program’s (SDAMP) <a href="https://www.sdampp.org/documents/2021AnnualGraduateReport.pdf">report</a> in 2021 showed that 78% of MS students who applied were accepted and this number seems to be increasing each year. This might be confounded by students who reapply to the match after gaining additional experience, but, looking at the applications for the upcoming cycle, this isn’t that common which might indicate that many students may not reattempt after their first try. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Response 3:</p>
<p>Thanks for the detailed response!</p>
<h3>Comment 4:</h3>
<p>Getting a residency is bullshit. Stick with EE.</p>
<h3>Comment 5:</h3>
<p>How possible is it for someone in health physics to transition over to medical physics? Can people with health physics education and experience get non-clinical medical physics jobs?</p>
<h3>Comment 6:</h3>
<p>Still learning about the field as I’m not in it myself (yet at least), but I came across a recent thread talking about insurance companies and which ones are a struggle to deal with, and how they often reject the specific plan the clinic comes up with…</p>
<p>So just to confirm here - are medical physicists really the ones that have to deal with the insurance companies? That’s incredibly surprising to me…</p>
<p>Response 1:</p>
<p>Speaking just from my own experience, which could be wildly different from the average, I am never the one directly dealing with an insurance company. When I worked in a university setting I never had anything to do with billing/insurance at all. When I worked at a cancer center I occasionally would do charging for some services like brachytherapy, but a billing specialist audited and submitted that and dealt with any questions from insurance. Now that I work at a community clinic I still don't do the billing, but I feel like it affects me a lot more. We regularly have patients that I will check a plan and then find out we need to redo things because insurance didn't actually approve IMRT. Or someone will be supposed to start in a couple days and the dosimetrist hasn't started planning yet because we don't know how many fractions will be approved. Even not being the person that "deals with insurance companies" they are a huge pain and getting worse.</p>
<p>Response 2:</p>
<p>Yeah it is. But it's not really a medical physicist problem as it is a problem for all of healthcare, which we are part of. Every career in the medical field is dealing with increasingly frustrating insurance policies.</p>
<p>Original URL: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MedicalPhysics/comments/zqmkjz/training_tuesday_weekly_thread_for_questions/">https://www.reddit.com/r/MedicalPhysics/comments/zqmkjz/training_tuesday_weekly_thread_for_questions/</a></p>
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