Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region
The increased use of medical imaging and radiation therapies has resulted in a high demand for medical physicists. Although medical physics programmes are well established in advanced countries, the same cannot be said for many low- and medium-income countries. In some countries, there may be huge v...
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| Format: | Article |
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Elsevier
2019
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| _version_ | 1825722009311510528 |
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| author | Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding Ng, Kwan Hoong Sarasanandarajah, Sivananthan |
| author_facet | Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding Ng, Kwan Hoong Sarasanandarajah, Sivananthan |
| author_sort | Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding |
| collection | UM |
| description | The increased use of medical imaging and radiation therapies has resulted in a high demand for medical physicists. Although medical physics programmes are well established in advanced countries, the same cannot be said for many low- and medium-income countries. In some countries, there may be huge variations in the graduates' skill and quality, which pose a problem in ensuring patient safety, providing quality assurance in treatments, optimisation of protocols and standardisation of quality. It also makes any yet-to-be-established regional peer recognition efforts problematic. In order to understand the depth of this problem, a survey was carried out as part of the home-based assignment under the RAS 6088 IAEA programme. A large diversity in terms of course content, duration, clinical training and student profile could be observed across the Asia-Oceania universities surveyed. Out of 25 programmes, only six received recognition from professional bodies, and they were mostly in Australia and New Zealand. Hence, to ensure quality education, a regional curriculum model needs to be developed to harmonise standards. And there is still a long way to go towards standardizing medical physics education and clinical training in the region. © 2019 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T05:59:04Z |
| format | Article |
| id | um.eprints-23167 |
| institution | Universiti Malaya |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T05:59:04Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | um.eprints-231672019-12-02T01:39:20Z http://eprints.um.edu.my/23167/ Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding Ng, Kwan Hoong Sarasanandarajah, Sivananthan R Medicine The increased use of medical imaging and radiation therapies has resulted in a high demand for medical physicists. Although medical physics programmes are well established in advanced countries, the same cannot be said for many low- and medium-income countries. In some countries, there may be huge variations in the graduates' skill and quality, which pose a problem in ensuring patient safety, providing quality assurance in treatments, optimisation of protocols and standardisation of quality. It also makes any yet-to-be-established regional peer recognition efforts problematic. In order to understand the depth of this problem, a survey was carried out as part of the home-based assignment under the RAS 6088 IAEA programme. A large diversity in terms of course content, duration, clinical training and student profile could be observed across the Asia-Oceania universities surveyed. Out of 25 programmes, only six received recognition from professional bodies, and they were mostly in Australia and New Zealand. Hence, to ensure quality education, a regional curriculum model needs to be developed to harmonise standards. And there is still a long way to go towards standardizing medical physics education and clinical training in the region. © 2019 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica Elsevier 2019 Article PeerReviewed Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding and Ng, Kwan Hoong and Sarasanandarajah, Sivananthan (2019) Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region. Physica Medica, 66. pp. 21-28. ISSN 1120-1797, DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmp.2019.09.079 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmp.2019.09.079>. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmp.2019.09.079 doi:10.1016/j.ejmp.2019.09.079 |
| spellingShingle | R Medicine Wong, Jeannie Hsiu Ding Ng, Kwan Hoong Sarasanandarajah, Sivananthan Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title | Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title_full | Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title_fullStr | Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title_full_unstemmed | Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title_short | Survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the Asia-Oceania region |
| title_sort | survey of postgraduate medical physics programmes in the asia oceania region |
| topic | R Medicine |
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