Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly
podcast.
In this episode, we discuss the career opportunities
open to physicists
and engineers
looking to work within health care as medical
physicists
or clinical
engineers.
This podcast is sponsored by Radformation,
which is redefining
automation
in radiation oncology
with a full suite of tools designed to
streamline
clinical workflows
and boost efficiency.
At the center of it all is AutoContour,
a powerful AI driven auto contouring solution
trusted by centers worldwide.
It delivers high quality contours for organs at
risk, lymph nodes, and even complex HDR
brachytherapy
cases.
With over 290
models across CT,
MR,
and CBCT
models,
including new structures like estro breast nodes,
prone breast and heart, and HDR
bowel,
AutoContour
helps clinics stay ahead of evolving standards.
AutoContour
supports
zero click workflows,
deformable
image registration,
and advanced review tools,
giving teams more control
and flexibility
while saving
valuable time.
Now is the time to explore everything AutoContour
has to offer.
Visit
radformation.com
to learn more or schedule
your personalized
demo.
This week, Physics World's Tammy Freeman is in
conversation
with two physicists
working in The UK's
National Health Service,
the NHS.
They are Rachel Alcock,
a trainee clinical scientist at University Hospitals
Coventry and Warwickshire
NHS Trust,
and George Bruce,
a clinical scientist
at NHS
Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
We also hear from Chris Watt, head of
communications
and public affairs at IPEM,
about the new IPEM careers guide.
This episode was created in collaboration
with IPEM,
the Institute of Physics and Engineering
in Medicine.
IPEM owns the journal
Physics in Medicine and Biology.
Here's that interview.
A degree in physics can open up a
wide range of career opportunities.
One area in which physicists,
as well as those with engineering degrees, could
apply their unique skills is within health care.
This could be working as a medical physicist
to develop and optimize state of the art
techniques for diagnosing and treating disease,
or as a clinical engineer,
designing, maintaining, and improving medical devices ranging from
ventilators to advanced surgical robots.
In this podcast, we speak with two physicists
working in The UK's National Health Service.
I'm pleased to be joined today by Rachel
Alcock,
a trainee clinical scientist in radiotherapy
physics
at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust,
and George Bruce,
a clinical scientist at NHS Greater Glasgow and
Clyde who specializes in MRI physics.
We're also joined by Chris Watt, head of
communications and public affairs at IPEM,
the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.
And Chris is gonna tell us about the
dedicated careers guide that IPEM has just produced.
So welcome to the podcast, Rachel, George, and
Chris.
Thank you. Nice to be here.
So
let's start off with a few questions for
Rachel and George. So first of all, can
you just tell us a bit about your
current role and what this involves?
Okay. I'll go first.
So I'm,
training at the moment to be a clinical
scientist in radiotherapy
physics. So
I did a physics degree.
And
in radiotherapy, we're trying to
treat
cancerous
tumors with radiation.
And as physicists,
we have a role to understand,
understand the physics is going on and
basically have responsibility
to make sure that when the doctor says
they want a certain amount of radiation to
a certain place that it happens. So this
involves a variety of things like planning of
treatments and testing of equipment and commissioning
new equipment and software to use
and answering doctors' queries when they've got complicated
patients coming in.
And
trials are also part of our role as
well. So it's a variety of things, really.
And you're based in a hospital?
Yes. Yes. We're based in the cancer center
of the hospital.
Okay. Great. And,
George, could you tell us about what your
current role is?
Yeah. So, unlike Rachel, I work in non
ionizing radiation. So I specialize in MRI physics,
which has all to do with MRI scanners.
And while there isn't any ionizing radiation,
because it's a very, very large magnet in
the center of a hospital, which is three
times stronger than those ones you used to
pick up cars,
they can still be very dangerous. So we
have to make sure that everyone is safe
around the magnet and don't bring anything ferromagnetic
near the magnet.
There's also dangers to do with, radio frequency
transmission and heating.
And then on the more patient facing side,
we do an awful lot of, sequence optimization,
making images
faster and look nicer. And we do research
as well trying to develop new techniques to
use MRI in different ways to detect different
types of disease.
K. Great. So what what attracted you to
a career in health care?
Well, for me, I'd I'd started out with
physics,
because I was always the sort of child
who asked how does that work and and
why. And then, when I was about 15,
I landed in hospital, and that got me
really interested in health care.
Then,
my grades weren't good enough to go on
to do medicine, so I continued down the
physics track. But when I was in about
my third year at university,
I found out about medical physics, and I
thought it was a really, really good combination
of the two things that I'd really enjoyed
learning about. So that that really attracted me
to this role.
So for me, I
for a long time, I was kind of
attracted to working in a hospital. Like, I
vividly remember I was sat waiting for a
physiotherapy appointment in the waiting room, and I
thought, I want to work here. Not particularly
in physiotherapy, but just in the hospital. And
I didn't really know what to do with
that thought. I was never particularly attracted to
being the sort of doing the sort of
standard medical roots of being a doctor or
a nurse.
And I've had an interest in
physics and and maths in particular for a
long time and knew I wanted to use
those skills in a way that helped people,
like, helped people directly.
And so when I found out about medical
physics, that really fit for me,
and the rest is history.
Okay. That's great. So, I mean, what what
training route did you take? How did you
move from physics to
medical physics?
So
I'm doing what's called the NHS scientist training
program.
So this is a three year program,
which
involves,
being in
use you're recruited into a hospital and you
are a member of staff at that hospital,
and you spend most of the time in
your center, in your department.
And you work on a portfolio, basically. You've
got a long list of activities you need
to tick off during your time training to
make sure you've got the skills to be
a clinical scientist.
And alongside that, you also do a master's
in clinical science.
So,
over the three years part time. So it's
you have
some time dedicated to the masters and some
and but most of your time is in
the center doing the work, basically.
It recruits
nationally
every year,
and hospitals around the country take part in
it, basically.
Okay. And, Georgie, did you follow a similar
route for your training?
Similar, but not the same. So, based up
in Scotland, we've got the Scottish medical physics
and clinical engineering training scheme,
which,
effectively is is slightly different because you do
your first year as a pure masters at
the University of Glasgow.
And then the following years, the second year
is based as a foundation year. So you
rotate around and you do ten weeks in
each specialism, which would be,
for medical physics, it'd be MRI,
radiotherapy,
nuclear medicine, and radi radiation protection.
And then at the end of your second
year, you would choose one of those to
specialize in, and you would spend a year
and a half specializing in that. At which
point, you would submit your sort of portfolio
of evidence, which shows that what you have
done is equivalent to what Rachel will have
done. So you you're showing that the two
things are equivalent.
I think it's also worth mentioning that both
of the positions as a trainee
are paid. So you're are paid as a
NHS member of staff. So you're not having
to take three and a half years out
unpaid, which I don't think anyone could do.
No. Because this is this is after your
first degree, your initial degree. Yeah? Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. So I I did a physics degree,
and then, you are paid effectively to do
the masters and your fees are taken care
of, which is very nice.
So you both,
studied for master's degrees,
as part of this training. And then, George,
you're also currently studying for a PhD?
Yes. Yeah. So about two years ago, I
applied to the chief scientist office for a
fellowship.
And so they effectively have bought me out
three days a week now for the next
five years or well, for the five years
from two years ago.
So that means that I'm now studying for
a PhD alongside
my clinical role, but it's quite nice because
I get dedicated PhD days. So while a
lot a lot of my colleagues have had
to do PhDs
with whatever time their department can give them,
I've actually been given
guaranteed days to do my PhD, which is
very, very lucky, I think.
That's great. I mean and why did you
choose to focus on MRI?
Well, if I'm honest, when I was doing
the masters, the m MRI was the thing
I really didn't understand.
I just I didn't get it. It was
too complicated.
And so I decided to do my MSC
project
in MRI to try and gain a better
understanding of it. And as with a lot
of things, maybe when you don't understand it
at first, when you finally get your head
around the corner, it suddenly becomes really, really
interesting. And once you're down the rabbit hole,
you find it really interesting.
I also was really attracted to the fact
that there is no ionizing radiation for MRI,
which means that if you're interested in doing
research or having healthy volunteers, the the doors
are more open in that sense because you
can volunteer for an MRI scan, and there's
much less legislation. There's still obviously protections and
everything in place, but there's significantly fewer hurdles.
Yeah. I guess if you're sort of
studying x-ray based imaging, you're gonna have a
lot more problems
doing that stuff. Yeah. Definitely. Anything through radionuclides
or gamma rays or x rays, you're gonna
have issues.
Okay. And, Rachel, why did you choose radiotherapy
as your specialist area?
So similar to,
the Scottish scheme that George mentioned, the first
year of the scientist training program, you spend
rotating around different areas of medical physics.
And I was
frankly, my hospital gave me the option to
choose which area I wanted to specialize in
after I'd done those rotations. So I got
a really good sort of taster
of each of those areas.
For me, the sort of different areas of
medical physics, they vary in
how much
how much time you spend with the patients.
So some are really patient facing in the
sense that you see patients every day, you
have appointments with them. That would be the
more nuclear medicine side, I'd say, or, to
ones where you don't really see patients at
all, but you're working on the equipment and
the physics required to, you know, diagnose them.
For me, radiotherapy
was a really nice in between.
We are consistently involved in the pathway of
a patient and cases of patients.
Although we don't see patients every day where
there's always a sort of new case coming
in that we need to look at, which
I found really interesting. I want to sort
of be directly involved in that,
and the problem solving side of it, but
also having,
sort of a balance of that and sort
of behind the scenes working on the equipment
and doing the science. I just found that
to be a really good balance for me,
which is ultimately why I chose it.
Okay. Great. And then
what key skills would you say are essential
if someone's looking for a career in medical
physics?
I would say,
communication, interpersonal skills are really important.
You
work in you're always gonna be working in
teams,
and,
working with
other physicists, but also other other professions, radiographers,
doctors, technicians.
So being able to communicate
physics ideas to people who aren't physicists is
really important and to be able to work
well with other people is really important.
And also, as I said, you know,
some of the time
medical physicists spend is with patients.
And so you need to be able to
relate well to patients and, and
have a good bedside manner and compassion and
things like that. So,
yeah, communication and interpersonal skills, I think, are
really important.
Yep. I I I would agree with that.
I think one of the ones that's most
commonly quoted is problem solving skills.
And that's sort of true for all physics
things.
Every patient is going to come through differently,
and even the same disease will present differently.
And
all different scanners and pieces of equipment behave
differently, so you need to be able to
think well on the fly and solve problems.
And the other thing I would sort of
say is,
being able to maintain a level of empathy
while
maintaining a level of, professionalism.
And this is a a hard line sometimes
to tell because you can get very, very
difficult cases,
pediatric cases, terminally ill cases where you've still
got to do your job, but it's very,
very important
to in some respects, it's important to be
detached. And in some respects, it's very, very
important that you maintain
the appropriate level of empathy as well.
And that that's sometimes a difficult line to
tow because you gotta remember that you're dealing
with people and patients and entire lives and
do the best get make the job to
the best for your ability. But at the
same time, you can't let that sort of
thing overwhelm you to the point that you
can no longer do your job and no
longer function.
So I'd say that's that's another really important
trait.
Yeah. So, I mean, that's that's really a
sort of unique
challenge
of this this sort of work.
So, I mean,
both
you, George and Rachel, you're working within hospitals
in the clinical sector.
But medical physicists and clinical engineers have got
a there's a range of other career options
available.
They could work within academia, for example,
performing cutting edge research and teaching and developing
clinical trials.
Or another option is the industrial sector, so
working to produce and develop innovative
medical equipment and technology.
Now as I mentioned at the start, IPEM
has just published a careers guide that aims
to provide the tools and knowledge needed to
pursue a career in any of these sectors.
So, Chris, if I can turn to you
now and ask what prompted IPEM to create
this careers guide?
Well, as the professional body representing medical physicists
and clinical engineers as well as clinical technologists,
The promotion of the workforce and support for
the workforce
is very much one of our absolute top
priorities,
and a great deal of our work goes
into doing that.
And we've heard back from our members and
the wider professional community
that getting more people into the workforce is
a key challenge that we face at the
moment. So we put our minds to it
and talked to many of our members and
decided that coming up with a careers guide,
which could be used by,
both students
and also,
earlier careers professionals,
would be a really useful resource for them
to not only promote,
the exciting careers that people can have in
medical physics and clinical engineering, but also explain
to them a bit about the various roles
that there are, training pathways,
and other opportunities,
and also some of the requirements
around, for example, CPD,
the benefits of registration.
And we've also been extremely grateful to many
of our members,
including both George and Rachel for allowing themselves
to be case studies for this to give
real life examples of the sorts of careers
that people can follow in medical physics and
clinical engineering.
Great. So, I mean,
you you mentioned this briefly, but what what
sort of information does the guide contain?
So as well as our case studies of
some of our members,
we've also got pathways into the profession,
the various training routes that people can follow.
We've got a bit of a jargon buster
in there because I think for
even for those of us who work in
the medical physics and clinical engineering sphere,
we'll accept that most people out there,
in the world don't know a great deal
about medical physics and clinical engineering. So we've
got a bit of a jargon buster in
there to explain to people,
exactly what we're talking about.
It says information on the CPD,
some of the CPD,
training and career development that IPEM itself offers
as well as other options as well,
the importance of registration. So for instance, if
you're a clinical technologist,
why it's important to go onto the RCT,
the register of clinical technologists.
So there's a great deal of of information
in there. And alongside the careers guide, we're
also going to be launching a number of
careers videos, which, again, we've worked with some
of our members covering medical physics, clinical engineering,
and clinical technologist professions and careers.
And those videos will also be coming out
out around the same same time as the
careers guide as well.
So how can our listeners access the careers
guide?
So the careers guide, as well as our
videos can be accessed on the IPEM website
at ipem.ac.uk,
and you can find, an easy link on
there and have a look through the careers
guide and watch our careers videos on our
website.
Excellent. Thank you. So
finally,
perhaps you can all answer this.
Could you offer one key piece of advice
for physicists or engineers
interested in a career in health care? Perhaps,
Chris, you could go first.
For me, as somebody,
who doesn't work
specifically as a medical physicist or clinical engineer
but works for the professional body, I would
say have a look at the IPEN website.
We've got a great deal of information on
there,
both about the benefits of becoming an IPEN
member. We provide a great deal of training,
CPD,
and education.
We provide events, member discounts on events,
and a whole load of information
about the various career pathways and what our
members do. So do have a look on
our website,
and find out more about the exciting careers
that you can have would be the piece
of advice that I would give.
Excellent. Thanks. And, George, do you have any
important advice for people?
Yeah. I would just say for people to
be tenacious,
because, obviously, as has been mentioned, medical physics
and clinical engineer, that thing is is sort
of lesser known
applications of physics and lesser known jobs still.
So a lot of people don't even know
we exist.
But that said, the people who do know
we exist,
the the job positions are fought over quite
competitively.
So anyone who's managed to get onto any
of the training schemes has done very well,
which means that if you're interested
in a role or a career in health
care from a physics or engineering perspective,
You need to be quite committed to it.
You need to be tenacious in making sure
that you get some work experience and fill
out your application as best you can and
make yourself the best candidate.
So,
for want of a better word, being bullheaded
and enthusiastic are two very good things, and
also asking a lot of the stupid questions.
Because the number of times I've asked a
stupid question and it stand out as not
a stupid question at all, but you just
felt like it was a silly thing to
ask. Is this
all of those things would be my my
sort of key pieces of advice that I
give to a lot of the trainees or
aspiring trainees.
Excellent. Thanks. And, finally, Rachel.
Yeah.
So my key piece of advice kind of
follows from what George was saying. I think
if you want to work specifically in healthcare,
Getting
experience in a healthcare environment, I think is
really important.
So I've had friends who have had jobs
in areas other than medical physics prior to
applying
for, to get on a training scheme, which
has really helped them.
I mean, in my case, my, I didn't
work professionally, but I did,
some volunteering in a COVID vaccination center.
And it's things like that that show when
you're applying that you're not just interested in
the physics, but you're interested in the application
of it. You're interested in the healthcare environment
and looking after patients,
and the importance of that role.
And that will really help you stand out,
in those applications.
Excellent. Well
yeah. I mean, thanks. There's some great information
there and some advice for people looking
to follow this unique and rewarding
career, and
thanks everybody for joining us today on the
podcast.
Thank you. It's been lovely. Very much. Cheers.
That was Rachel Alcock,
George Bruce, and Chris Watt in conversation with
Physics World's Tammy Freeman.
Thanks to them for a fascinating conversation,
and a special thanks to our producer,
Fred Ailes.
This podcast is sponsored by Radformation,
which is redefining
automation
in radiation
oncology
with a full suite of tools designed to
streamline
clinical workflows
and boost efficiency.
At the center of it all is AutoContour,
a powerful AI driven auto contouring solution
trusted by centers worldwide.
It delivers high quality contours for organs at
risk, lymph nodes, and even complex HDR
brachytherapy
cases.
With over 290
models across CT,
MR,
and CBCT
models,
including new structures like estro breast nodes, prone
breast and heart, and HDR
bowel,
AutoContour
helps clinics stay ahead of evolving standards.
AutoContour
supports
zero click workflows,
deformable image registration,
and advanced review tools,
giving teams more control and flexibility
while saving
valuable time.
Now is the time to explore everything
Auto Contour
has to offer.
Visit
radformation.com
to learn more
or schedule your personalized
demo.
I'm afraid that's all the time we have
for this week's podcast.
We'll be back again next week.