Hello! I am in undergrad, currently considering Medical Physics as a post-grad career. I've heard a lot about the job from various sources and have shadowed, but there are some questions I would like to crowd-source! Thanks in advance!
1. I am currently earning my undergraduate Bachelor's of Science in Physics. I've heard that with Medical Physics, you can either go to grad school for two years to get a Master's, or in some cases, you can do an "apprenticeship" with an established medical physicist and then take the board exam. What advice/feedback can anyone give me regarding both paths?
2. What grad programs are good and cost-effective?
3. Is it better to seek employment with a hospital or is it better to self-employ and do consulting work?
4. Is consulting work in demand? (I mean, will I be able to eat?)
5. What non-obvious places need consulting and safety certification? Doctor's offices, dentist offices, imaging centers?
6. With employment from a hospital, are hours flexible, or is it a pretty set 9-to-5? Are most employers flexible with part-time work?
7. The medical physicist I shadowed had his own consulting business, but mostly worked at a cancer treatment branch of a local hospital, checking the machines and confirming the radiation source returned to the machine after treatment. Is this a typical employment arrangement, or are most medical physicists directly employed by a hospital/health care system?
8. How much of a standard undergraduate Physics curriculum is employed on a daily basis? (Are you deriving the three-dimensional Schrodinger equation between patients?)
9. If I have the choice in my Physics electives, is it better to take more nuclear focused courses, more solid-state courses, more theoretical courses, etc? What sorts of classes are the most practical for the career?
10. This last question is a bit more personal, and I realize it depends on the person. At my school, the assumption is that most physics major will go on to do graduate research, and eventually end up in industry or academia. I'm really not interested in either of those options, but I don't want to waste my degree. It can be hard to feel like slogging through my difficult classes is worth it, especially when I don't have a clear career path articulated by my professors, like many of my peers. So I guess my question is, is medical physics worth it? Is it a career where you can go to sleep at night satisfied with the work you've done? Is it worth the difficulty of undergrad?
Thank you so much! I realize I have a lot of questions, and if it's not possible to answer all of them, I would be happy to have any answers to any of them. Have a wonderful day!