Medical Physicist

Catherine Lawford: The most satisfying aspect of the work that I do is knowing that the science that I use at work really directly affects patient outcomes; it has a real human aspect to being a scientist which I really enjoy.

Nick Hardcastle: So physicists in their day-to-day duties will work with the machines to make sure they’re delivering the right radiation output, they’ll make sure the machines are mechanically within the spec, ensure the radiation safety of the whole environment.

Catherine: My job is really to make sure that the radiation therapy that people receive at our hospital is delivered accurately and safely.

Nick: The second part of the job is to work with the technology and make sure we’re delivering the most efficient and effective treatment we can, and work out ways to improve treatment for radiation patients.

Catherine: The radiation oncology medical physicists behind the scenes crew – you’ll rarely see us – occasionally we will meet patients but we’re really working behind the scenes to make sure that every step of your treatment is safe and accurate. We are involved with pretty much every step of the process that happens before your treatment, so everything from calibrating the CT scanner, looking after the planning systems that the computers use to generate the treatment plans, and making sure that the linear accelerators that actually deliver the treatment are all very safe and accurate.

Nick: The most satisfying aspect of my work as a medical physicist would be the fact that I get to work with a multidisciplinary team of radiation therapists, radiation oncologists, and also different scientists.

Nick: A good physicist is primarily a good scientist, they must be heavily involved and enjoy the scientific method and that’s both theoretical and practical.

Catherine: It’s my personality to be quite calm and composed, and you obviously need to be good with numbers and physics, but you also it’s really the most important thing I think is being able to see the clinical significance of those numbers and those techniques that we use.

Catherine: Radiation oncology medical physics is a great career to work in if you’re interested in having a family as well. It’s a safe environment to work in. As physicists we ensure that it’s safe – that’s our role.

Nick: We can essentially pick and choose the hours we want to work. If I want to work early in the morning and finish earlier in the day – that’s fine I can do work on the machines prior to it and I can work during the clinical hours. I have a young baby and it’s quite easy for me to schedule my hours around my family.

Catherine: I think also on the work life balance, there’s a great opportunity for travel with medical physicists. Internationally there’s a shortage of medical physicists so it does give you the opportunity to work really anywhere in the world.

Nick: We’re quite a small community worldwide so we’re constantly linked in to our colleagues in the international centres in America and Europe and Asia and so we’re quite good at collaborating with each other, both with research projects, and also with clinical trials.

Catherine: Treatments are becoming much more personalised, more individualised, this is all occurring according to evidence- based medicine, best practice, and we have to be behind that not only responding to these changes but really driving them from a physics point of view.

Nick: Probably the best way to get into medical physics would be to do a physics degree as an undergraduate degree and then you can either do a master’s in medical physics or then go into it from there, or you can do a trainee position and your masters in parallel.

Catherine: Working in the cancer field is incredibly rewarding even though we don’t have much face-to-face contact with patients it’s so satisfying to know that what we do behind the scenes directly affects their outcome.

Nick: Well I don’t personally interact with the cancer patients in most of my day-to-day duties I understand that every part of my job is helping to improve the cancer treatment that they have and making sure that they’re receiving the most effective treatment.