Monday, November 3, 2014

On Occasion of 2nd International Day of Medical Physics

Suresh Poudel

On November 7, this year Medical Physicists around the world are going to celebrate 2nd International Day of Medical Physics (IDMP) to mark the birth date of Marie Sklodowska- Curie, the pioneer researcher on radioactivity, who was born on the same day in 1867. The theme of IDMP 2014 is “Looking into the Body: Advancement in Imaging through Medical Physics.”  

Last year on the same day, to mark 1st IDMP, a Symposium was organized at B. P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital (BPKMCH), Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal. It had been a successful event. Nepalese Association of Medical Physicists (NAMP) is the professional organization of/for Nepalese Medical Physicists. NAMP is small in terms of its membership subscription. Nevertheless it has been an important organization to further the role of medical physicists in national context and in international arena. NAMP is a member of International Organization of Medical Physicists.

Although International Labor Organization (ILO) has listed medical physicists as health professions, it is the least heard profession in Nepal. Many of us even when we are in medical professionals do not know who medical physicists are and what exactly they do. So it has been urgent to make everyone clear about the role of Medical Physicist in Healthcare, particularly in diagnosis and therapy of cancer.

Medical Physicists are basically the physicists who apply their knowledge of physics to medicine. On the occasion of 2nd IDMP, I found it relevant to highlight the role of Medical Physicists in medicine. According to American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) many medical physicists are heavily involved with responsibilities in areas of diagnosis and treatment, often with specific patients. These activities take the form of consultations with physician colleagues. Medical physicists play a vital role and often leading role on medical research team. Their activities cover wide frontiers, including such key areas as cancer, heart disease, and mental illness. In cancer, they work primarily on issues involving radiation, such as the basic mechanisms of biological change after irradiation, the application of high energy machines to patient treatment, and the development of new techniques for precise treatment. Similarly in teaching often medical physicists have faculty appointments at universities and colleges, where they help train future medical physicists, resident physicians, medical students, and technologists who operate the various types of equipment used to perform diagnosis and treatment.

Besides in hospitals, medical physicist is generally responsible for specification, acceptance, commissioning, calibration and Quality Assurance of all radiotherapy equipment; radiation measurement of beam data; calculation procedures for determination and verification of patient doses; physics content of treatment planning and patient treatment plans; supervision of therapy equipment maintenance, safety and performance; establishment and review of QA procedures, radiation safety and radiation protection in the radiotherapy department. Besides they have important roles in education and research.

To conclude, medical physicist is an important member of cancer diagnosis and treatment team. S/he is a person who conducts scientific research on physics and medicine and also does teaching and deals with radiation protection and safety issues inside and outside the hospitals.

The writer is a student of Gono University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh and a member of Bangladesh Medical Physics Society(BMPS)

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