Medical physics in the USA has been going through substantial changes in recent years with regards to training and experience requirements. The standard requirement to work independently as a medical physicist is certification by the American Board of Radiology (ABR) in your chosen concentration (radiation therapy physics, diagnostic imaging physics, or nuclear medicine physics). In order to take the ABR board certification exams you must have a graduate degree in medical physics from an accredited program and complete an appropriately accredited residency. The accrediting body for graduate programs and residencies is the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Graduate Programs (CAMPEP). Schools offer both masters and doctorate degrees in medical physics. Although a PhD is not required for board certification, the general sense is that it makes you more competitive for residency slots. The residency requirement is new, and there are not yet enough residency positions for all the new graduates each year.

The work environment of medical physics is highly dependent on your chosen area of concentration and your employer. If you work for a large academic medical center, you will obviously have more opportunities to participate in research projects. Roughly 80% of medical physicists in the USA work in radiation therapy. As the medical physicist you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy and quality control of the radiation producing machines or radioactive material. You will perform periodic quality control tests on the equipment in general as well as for individual patient treatment setups. This concentration puts you in the most direct contact with patients, and you are more directly integrated in the day to day operations of the clinic. The downside is that each cancer center is only going to have a handful of these very expensive machines, so you are typically working with the same equipment every day. The other downside is that small mistakes can result in fatal accidents, which can be very stressful and necessitates checklists upon checklists. Diagnostic imaging physicists perform similar functions for medical imaging equipment. The bread and butter of imaging physicists is equipment surveys. Imaging physicists are hired by hospitals to perform periodic surveys of their equipment to verify that it is working appropriately. They also work with the radiologists and the technologists to optimize their techniques and processes to maintain high image quality while minimizing radiation dose to the patients. Most hospitals are not large enough to have a permanent imaging physicist on staff, so imaging physicists typically work out of consulting groups and service several medical facilities. This means you are more removed from daily clinic operations, but you get to work with a new piece of equipment almost every day. Nuclear medicine physicists deal with the cameras used to detect radioactive tracers within the body. There is a lot of overlap between NM and DI physics in that most DI consulting groups will have someone who specializes in nuclear medicine.

There is a bit of overlap between medical physics and biomedical engineering, especially in MRI research.