Legal and ethical issues in medic...(involving sexual harassment student disc...),Health

Serago's talk, "Civil Law, Ethics and the Medical Physicist" (TU-D-350-2) will be at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29 in Room 350. Abstract: http://www.aapm.org/meetings/amos2/pdf/35-9897-54661-708.pdf

5) PROFESSIONAL TRAINING: ARE MEDICAL PHYSICISTS PREPARED FOR WORKPLACE POLITICS?

Medical physicists are important in clinical decision-making, but unlike the doctors and other medical personnel who treat patients, they have not historically been required to receive formal, standardized clinical training before becoming certified. As a result, they often apply the same analytical tools taught in school to the messy politics of a modern hospital setting. A special panel will discuss how this sometimes goes badly and what medical physicists can do to comport themselves more professionally.

Although they deal with some of the most complex procedures in all of medicine, the training of medical physicists has never been completely formalized, as many of its practitioners come to it indirectly through scientific research. In contrast, medical doctors are required not only to learn the skills of their profession, but also spend time as a resident, seeing how the actual business of being a doctor is performed.

Without this sort of training, medical physicists may tend to rely too heavily on their problem-solving skills when interacting with their peers. This can lead to a medical physicist being overlooked by hospital administrators and doctors who may prize their colleague's technical knowledge but feel he or she does not have a full grasp of the big picture. However, sidelining medical physicists in this way can hurt a hospital, especially when important decisions about equipment purchases and optimization are made without the input of their expertise.

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