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.