# Independent linac commissioning matters for radiotherapy

An episode of [Physics World Weekly Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1400686733), 25 Jun 2026, 29 min.

Audio: https://media.blubrry.com/physicsworldweeklypodcast/content.blubrry.com/physicsworldweeklypodcast/PWWeekly25June2026JamesGiltzOnePhysics.mp3

Our podcast guest is James Giltz of One Physics

## Transcript

[0:07] - Hello, and welcome to this episode of the
[0:10] - Physics World weekly podcast,
[0:12] - which is sponsored by one physics.
[0:15] - Our guest this week is James Gilts of
[0:18] - one Physics.
[0:20] - In a wide ranging conversation with Physics World's
[0:23] - Tammy Freeman,
[0:24] - Gilts explains how the company provides comprehensive
[0:28] - medical physics support
[0:30] - for radiotherapy,
[0:32] - from planning new centers through to ongoing
[0:36] - clinical operations.
[0:38] - That conversation is coming up after this message
[0:42] - from our sponsor.
[0:44] - One Physics is The USA's
[0:46] - largest outsourced medical physics provider,
[0:50] - trusted by over 4,000
[0:52] - clients.
[0:53] - We proudly deliver diagnostic and therapy physics services,
[0:58] - linear accelerator commissioning,
[1:00] - dosimetry
[1:01] - treatment planning, and radiation
[1:04] - safety officer services
[1:06] - nationwide.
[1:08] - We are experts in medical physics services
[1:11] - and radiation
[1:12] - safety
[1:13] - and can support your organization,
[1:15] - whether you need annual physics testing to meet
[1:19] - regulatory
[1:20] - guidelines
[1:21] - or are looking to implement
[1:23] - a theranostics
[1:24] - program.
[1:25] - We are experts in all areas related to
[1:28] - physics and radiation safety.
[1:31] - With national scale and a local
[1:34] - relationship driven approach,
[1:36] - our best in class physicists
[1:38] - bring precision and personalized care to every facility
[1:43] - we serve.
[1:44] - In the world of medical physics, precision
[1:47] - isn't optional.
[1:49] - It's everything.
[1:50] - One Physics,
[1:51] - your trusted partner in medical physics,
[1:55] - linear accelerator commissioning, and radiation safety.
[1:59] - Learn more about our approach to radiation safety
[2:03] - or schedule a personalized
[2:05] - consultation
[2:07] - at 1physics.com.
[2:17] - Radiation therapy is an essential component of cancer
[2:20] - care and is used in the treatment of
[2:22] - roughly half of all cancer patients.
[2:25] - To ensure that these treatments are both safe
[2:27] - and effective, it's critical that the linear accelerators
[2:31] - or LINACs
[2:32] - that deliver the radiation
[2:34] - are as reliable,
[2:35] - efficient, and accurate as possible.
[2:38] - The US based medical physics consultancy,
[2:41] - One Physics,
[2:42] - aims to help hospitals and cancer centers meet
[2:45] - these goals
[2:46] - by bringing together a team of highly trained
[2:49] - expert medical physicists
[2:50] - to provide a wide range of radiotherapy
[2:53] - and diagnostic imaging physics services.
[2:57] - I'm speaking today with medical physicist James Gilts,
[3:01] - director of commissioning services at one physics,
[3:04] - about the importance of linac commissioning
[3:07] - and how the company works with health care
[3:09] - organizations
[3:10] - to optimize patient safety and clinical efficiency.
[3:14] - Welcome to the podcast, James.
[3:17] - Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[3:19] - So could you start by giving a quick
[3:22] - introduction to the services that One Physics offers
[3:25] - and your role in the company?
[3:28] - Absolutely. So
[3:30] - One Physics is a comprehensive medical physics services
[3:33] - company. We,
[3:36] - like to do what I think some of
[3:37] - my colleagues would call,
[3:39] - cradle to grave physics support.
[3:41] - So we can support a center that is
[3:44] - not open yet,
[3:46] - all the way through its planning as it
[3:47] - relates to physics,
[3:49] - through its opening as they install machines, qualify
[3:52] - them through either diagnostic or therapy services,
[3:56] - and then provide continuing physics support,
[4:00] - while they're open, either with direct physics staffing,
[4:03] - software tools,
[4:05] - ancillary contracts, those sorts of things.
[4:08] - My role in the company is to
[4:10] - address some of those ancillary
[4:13] - contracts and initial services.
[4:15] - So my team comes in and commissions machines,
[4:18] - performs shielding surveys,
[4:20] - shielding design calculations,
[4:22] - things of that nature.
[4:25] - Okay. So can you explain what the in
[4:27] - app commissioning actually involves?
[4:29] - And why is it so important for radiotherapy
[4:32] - based cancer treatments?
[4:35] - Absolutely.
[4:37] - I kinda wanna answer those in the opposite
[4:39] - order.
[4:40] - The LINAC commissioning is critical to any radiation
[4:43] - therapy department because as the treatment teams are
[4:47] - designing and delivering
[4:49] - these care plans for patients,
[4:52] - in order for those plans to be
[4:55] - generated,
[4:56] - a treatment planning system has to have a
[4:58] - comprehensive
[4:59] - model of the accelerator that's gonna be used
[5:02] - for treatment.
[5:03] - And
[5:04] - these models
[5:05] - have to be as precise as possible so
[5:07] - that we can take care of patients and
[5:09] - treat them efficiently and effectively.
[5:13] - What we have to do in order to
[5:15] - achieve that is
[5:16] - take a very, very large set
[5:20] - of data about the beam coming out of
[5:22] - the head of that machine.
[5:24] - This is a dataset that is more expansive
[5:26] - than would be taken at any other time
[5:28] - during the machine's life,
[5:30] - taken with as many settings
[5:32] - as
[5:33] - practicable
[5:34] - for that system.
[5:36] - So how can one physics help in this
[5:38] - commissioning process?
[5:42] - So
[5:43] - we have a team that is dedicated to
[5:45] - commissioning. This is, staffed by physicists who are
[5:49] - commissioning machines routinely
[5:51] - and,
[5:52] - using tools and techniques that we've developed over
[5:55] - the years as we have commissioned more accelerators
[5:58] - than any other group in America.
[6:01] - This team
[6:02] - spends a great deal of time and effort
[6:04] - mastering
[6:06] - this process
[6:07] - and learning
[6:09] - for exactly what they should be looking for,
[6:11] - how these machines should be reacting,
[6:13] - and the consequences
[6:15] - of various measurements
[6:17] - behaving differently than expected, and what that could
[6:19] - mean
[6:20] - for the system, whether the machine needs to
[6:22] - be retuned, recalibrated,
[6:25] - or whether,
[6:26] - it can be modeled effectively and safely.
[6:29] - We also
[6:31] - have so much data from the machines that
[6:34] - we've commissioned that we can check
[6:37] - all of the machines we commissioned in a
[6:39] - sort of three pass methodology.
[6:42] - We compare the machine against,
[6:44] - our own internal aggregates,
[6:46] - which are representative datasets from the machines that
[6:49] - we've collected historically.
[6:51] - We can compare them against the vendor representative
[6:53] - data. So the,
[6:56] - the data that the vendors believe is their
[6:59] - representative machine.
[7:01] - And then we also do a comprehensive point
[7:04] - by point comparison
[7:06] - from their own treatment planning system. Once we've
[7:08] - built the model,
[7:10] - we calculate all of the fields, all of
[7:12] - the output factors
[7:14] - that we took
[7:15] - during
[7:16] - measurement
[7:17] - and do a direct comparison to ensure that
[7:20] - the model is as precise as possible to
[7:22] - reality.
[7:25] - Okay. And and then what was the benefits
[7:27] - for a hospital or a cancer center,
[7:30] - of using
[7:32] - a third party commissioning service,
[7:34] - for example, rather than the on-site physicists
[7:37] - just doing this work themselves?
[7:40] - That's a great question. There there's a lot
[7:42] - of advantages
[7:43] - depending on what that hospital is specifically looking
[7:46] - for.
[7:47] - One of
[7:49] - the big ones
[7:50] - that is important in the modern day of
[7:53] - healthcare as costs are getting tightened, constraints are
[7:56] - increasing,
[7:57] - is that we are so proficient at doing
[7:59] - this work that we have very rapid turnarounds
[8:02] - for these commissioning jobs.
[8:04] - A a typical site physicist
[8:06] - who maybe is performing a commissioning once every
[8:10] - ten,
[8:10] - fifteen years,
[8:12] - is going to rightly
[8:14] - take a very long time
[8:16] - to take these measurements and double check their
[8:19] - work and be as diligent as they're able
[8:22] - to be,
[8:23] - with their relative lack of experience in the,
[8:25] - in the medium.
[8:26] - We typically complete commissionings
[8:28] - in a two to three day time frame,
[8:30] - collecting all of the data, building the treatment
[8:33] - models, and validating those models, and then hand
[8:35] - it back to the site physicist to do
[8:38] - their final end to end testing.
[8:40] - This can get clinics online much faster
[8:44] - than they would be if they were using
[8:46] - internal services.
[8:48] - And then secondarily to that, there are
[8:52] - concerns, I would say, if you have an
[8:54] - on-site physicist who does not have the experience
[8:58] - that a dedicated third party commissioning team has
[9:00] - that doesn't have the sets of data to
[9:03] - compare to that we have where mistakes could
[9:06] - slip in to the data. Something could get
[9:08] - calculated incorrectly. An error could be made in
[9:11] - measurement,
[9:12] - and it's much harder for the standalone on-site
[9:15] - physicist to identify those faults.
[9:18] - That is part of why it rightly takes
[9:21] - them so long to accomplish the work. But
[9:23] - even with that extra time that they spend,
[9:26] - there are literally thousands of data points that
[9:29] - they need to be checking and verifying. It's
[9:31] - very easy for something to slip through.
[9:34] - And is it also important that the client
[9:36] - uses a an independent
[9:38] - provider to commission a linac?
[9:41] - Absolutely. I think one of the pillars of
[9:43] - the medical physics community is, you know, independent
[9:46] - third party checks.
[9:48] - Most clinics, whether through regulation or just good
[9:51] - practice, use something like IIROC that does a
[9:54] - third party output validation of their machines.
[9:58] - You know, their, their on-site physicist, I'm sure
[10:00] - is doing good work and is doing the
[10:01] - best that they can when they calibrate the
[10:03] - Linux, but we're all human and can make
[10:06] - mistakes.
[10:07] - So having that third party check of IIROC
[10:11] - gives confidence to the clinic, to the physicist
[10:14] - that's on-site, and ultimately to the patients that
[10:17] - their machines are calibrated correctly.
[10:19] - In the same way, a third party commissioning
[10:22] - service,
[10:22] - especially one that goes through the extra effort
[10:25] - to check it against as many datasets as
[10:27] - possible,
[10:29] - can provide a great deal of comfort to
[10:32] - the facility and to the on-site physics that
[10:34] - their machine is modeled well.
[10:36] - Okay. So One Physix uses, they have some
[10:40] - proprietary software, a tool called Quadrant.
[10:44] - What what's this? How does it work, and
[10:45] - and what advantages does it offer?
[10:48] - Yeah. So Quadrant is a software that was
[10:51] - developed
[10:52] - many, many years ago. I guess the first
[10:55] - version of Quadrant was developed many years ago
[10:58] - specifically for some of these reasons.
[11:01] - My predecessor, Mark DeWeese,
[11:03] - was
[11:04] - going around the country commissioning machines
[11:08] - more than I think most people would be
[11:10] - willing to in the modern era. He gave
[11:12] - up a lot of his time,
[11:14] - a lot of his personal life to commission
[11:17] - the
[11:18] - swath of machines that he had experience with.
[11:21] - But as a lot of people did historically
[11:23] - before some of these new technologies got developed,
[11:27] - he was still performing
[11:29] - a lot of the analysis for these data
[11:31] - in Excel sheets
[11:33] - and, you know, manual reviews
[11:36] - of Microsoft Office documents where he had to
[11:38] - just look and check with his eyes to
[11:41] - confirm these things.
[11:43] - At some point, he realized that this was
[11:45] - just a very tedious error prone process and
[11:48] - that even though he was very good at
[11:50] - it, very experienced and he knew what he
[11:52] - was looking for, again, he was a human
[11:55] - and
[11:57] - something like that is the highest risk
[12:01] - point for someone performing commissionings.
[12:03] - So he hired software developers and custom created
[12:07] - software
[12:08] - that would specifically
[12:10] - take the data that we take from these
[12:13] - water tanks
[12:14] - and analyze it at speed with the precision
[12:17] - of a computer so that it could kick
[12:19] - out,
[12:20] - variations,
[12:21] - errors,
[12:22] - odd readings,
[12:23] - and give objective
[12:26] - full field analysis
[12:28] - of all of the data so that he
[12:30] - initially could be individually confident in what he
[12:33] - was doing.
[12:34] - We've since developed that software to be
[12:38] - incredibly powerful. We're able to use it to
[12:41] - analyze and process data faster than anyone else,
[12:45] - and to a much greater extent.
[12:49] - Our data pace can process hundreds of thousands
[12:51] - of points
[12:53] - in seconds
[12:54] - and provide large scale reports
[12:57] - for clients and for us.
[13:00] - So this is what you'd you'd always use
[13:01] - if if someone from One Physics goes to
[13:04] - do the commissioning, they'd always use the Quadrant
[13:06] - tool?
[13:07] - Absolutely. Quadrant is integral to the work of,
[13:12] - I would say, in general, it's integral to
[13:14] - the work of most physicists
[13:16] - at one physics regardless of what service they're
[13:19] - providing. But certainly on the commissioning and ancillary
[13:21] - services team, Quadrant
[13:24] - is absolutely integral to what we do. You
[13:27] - know, some some of our commissioning physicists might
[13:29] - be working
[13:30] - very long days to get all of this
[13:33] - data collected in a timely manner, ten to
[13:35] - twelve hours.
[13:36] - And we have the software that as we're
[13:38] - working,
[13:40] - if
[13:41] - one of the team does do something stupid
[13:43] - as we are also humans, the software will
[13:46] - alert us immediately to that and say, you
[13:48] - know, hey. This reading you just took doesn't
[13:50] - make sense.
[13:51] - Are you sure? Go back and look at
[13:52] - it again.
[13:54] - And now we don't have to worry about,
[13:56] - Oh man, did
[13:58] - we accidentally upload it, say a 10 X
[14:01] - beam? Is it 15 X beam?
[14:03] - And
[14:04] - now we have to do secondary analysis, maybe
[14:07] - come back to site. All of that stopped
[14:09] - in advance. We get a near immediate feedback
[14:12] - to a high level of precision
[14:14] - about, is this data good? Is this data
[14:17] - representative of this type of machine?
[14:19] - Is this something we can use to model?
[14:23] - And and you mentioned a couple of times
[14:25] - that it makes the commissioning faster.
[14:29] - Why is that so important for health care
[14:31] - centers?
[14:33] - So speed, again, I I kind of alluded
[14:35] - to this earlier, but the way that the
[14:37] - health care industry is moving,
[14:40] - nowadays with changing to reimbursements
[14:43] - and,
[14:44] - just kind of general
[14:46] - production requirements
[14:48] - that hospitals need
[14:50] - to stay profitable, to stay solvent, whether they're
[14:52] - for profit or not for profit.
[14:56] - They need to be operating
[14:59] - the high value services like radiation oncology
[15:02] - as much as
[15:04] - practicable.
[15:05] - So,
[15:06] - you know, you can imagine you're
[15:08] - you're some hospital, you've spent $10.15,
[15:11] - dollars 40,000,000
[15:13] - opening up this new cancer center. That's a
[15:16] - very large line item on your book,
[15:19] - and
[15:20] - you need to recover that money to stay
[15:23] - solvent. You need to perhaps,
[15:25] - be independent of the financial aspect,
[15:28] - this community has a need for cancer care.
[15:31] - You know, maybe this is a rural center
[15:33] - that's hours away from the nearest major metropolitan
[15:36] - area where these services are available. And you
[15:38] - have patients now
[15:40] - that need therapy.
[15:42] - By using,
[15:43] - third a very fast and efficient third party
[15:46] - service like OnePhysics,
[15:48] - we can take that maybe four week timeline
[15:50] - that your site physicist might be using and
[15:53] - compress it into only a few days.
[15:56] - We work over weekends. So as you know,
[15:58] - they maybe the machine installer finishes
[16:01] - on a Thursday or Friday,
[16:04] - we'll be there all weekend taking that data
[16:06] - and modeling the machine.
[16:07] - And frequently, we're able to hand the data
[16:10] - book and models back to the site the
[16:13] - following Monday so they can get going and
[16:15] - get ready for treatment.
[16:17] - Excellent.
[16:18] - So and then once the LINAC is being
[16:20] - used to treat patients,
[16:23] - can Quadrant be used,
[16:25] - after commissioning for for other things?
[16:29] - Yes. In fact, that's something that, again, I've
[16:32] - I've mentioned that Quadrant
[16:34] - continued to get developed over time.
[16:37] - One of the things we realized once we
[16:39] - had this database
[16:41] - of the initial commissioning data that we took
[16:44] - on these machines
[16:45] - was that our periodic QA that physics performs
[16:48] - either monthly or annually,
[16:51] - the reference that we always set
[16:53] - is to the initial commissioning data. You know,
[16:56] - we want to confirm
[16:57] - that the machine is not drifting away
[17:01] - from that information that was entered into the
[17:03] - treatment planning system. We want it to be
[17:05] - consistent
[17:06] - day after day, year after year.
[17:08] - Well,
[17:09] - given the fact that we have that initial
[17:11] - data,
[17:12] - we realized that it would be very easy
[17:15] - to construct different tools and utilities to perform
[17:18] - some of these required tests that you see
[17:20] - in documents like t g one forty two
[17:23] - and have a
[17:26] - instant
[17:27] - accurate comparison
[17:29] - to the original commissioning data.
[17:32] - So we've developed that
[17:35] - configuration within Quadrant,
[17:37] - which also helps us to either on some
[17:39] - of the sites that we provide PhysX service
[17:42] - directly
[17:43] - or some sites that reach out to us
[17:45] - to take off some of the QA load
[17:47] - from them and perform either monthly or annual
[17:49] - QAs.
[17:50] - We can perform those periodic QAs also at
[17:54] - speed to a high level of objective accuracy,
[17:57] - referencing their commissioning systems.
[18:02] - So and you mentioned that so One Physics
[18:04] - also offers as well as commissioning, you offer
[18:07] - services such as annual or monthly QA.
[18:10] - Are there any other services within radiotherapy?
[18:15] - Yes. Absolutely. So I I think that
[18:19] - we try to be as much of a
[18:20] - one stop shop as we can. Right?
[18:24] - So from an ancillary contract perspective, we absolutely
[18:26] - offer monthly and annual QA services as needed.
[18:30] - This is becoming a more common ask as
[18:32] - the shortage of medical physicists is really constraining
[18:36] - the available efforts of local physicists.
[18:40] - We can take the these, you know, forty
[18:42] - plus hour QAs and compress them into a
[18:44] - weekend
[18:45] - so that your site physicist doesn't have to
[18:47] - spend that time and can instead focus on
[18:49] - their local patients.
[18:51] - But we also offer various validations for sites
[18:54] - that maybe want to get into stereotactic treatment
[18:57] - that were not originally intended for that. We
[18:59] - can
[19:00] - come in, work on that system, quantify it,
[19:03] - provide good recommendations and new sets of specific
[19:06] - small field data so that they can treat
[19:09] - some of these smaller, more aggressive lesions.
[19:13] - We perform shielding surveys and analyses. So if
[19:16] - something
[19:17] - happens or we're installing new equipment,
[19:20] - we'll come out and do a comprehensive shielding
[19:23] - evaluation
[19:24] - that's compliant with NCRP one fifty one and
[19:26] - provide that so the physicist doesn't have to
[19:29] - go back and
[19:30] - pick up a bunch of meters and design
[19:32] - their survey. We have systems set in place
[19:35] - to do it at speed.
[19:36] - So that's I mean, you've got quite a
[19:38] - broad portfolio of services there. Is it mostly
[19:42] - the smaller clinics that are looking to outsource
[19:44] - these medical physics services?
[19:47] - You know, it's a it's a combination,
[19:49] - honestly, and I think that different people outsource
[19:52] - for different reasons.
[19:54] - As you mentioned, oftentimes, it is these small
[19:56] - clinics. There's a center that
[19:59] - I recently was assisting with annual QAs that
[20:02] - is in a very rural area of the
[20:05] - South, and they have a physicist that has
[20:07] - to drive,
[20:08] - three hours, one day a week to provide
[20:11] - them some amount of physics service because there
[20:14] - is just no one else out there.
[20:17] - That physicist is doing that in addition to
[20:19] - his normal
[20:20] - weekly workload at the center that he works
[20:22] - at in a more major metropolitan area.
[20:25] - So he's already stretched incredibly thin. This is
[20:28] - this is someone who does not have the
[20:30] - time or capacity to perform annual QAs for
[20:33] - this clinic
[20:34] - despite their desire to help.
[20:37] - So we are filling that gap in that
[20:39] - rural community so that they can continue to
[20:41] - provide quality cancer care. But on the flip
[20:43] - side,
[20:44] - we've also had contracts
[20:46] - with,
[20:47] - some major universities
[20:49] - for commissioning work or for shielding work, for
[20:52] - example.
[20:53] - And I think the biggest bit of feedback
[20:55] - I get from those institutions
[20:56] - is that they did want
[20:58] - a third party service of experts to come
[21:01] - in so that they didn't make an error,
[21:03] - Right? These are physicists that are working
[21:06] - constantly, but they're working constantly
[21:09] - in a very high
[21:11] - stress, very high throughput environment,
[21:14] - working on direct chart checks, patient care, these
[21:17] - kinds of things. And they haven't commissioned a
[21:19] - machine in fifteen years.
[21:22] - They don't want their machine to end up
[21:25] - coming out with an error just because of
[21:27] - an oversight.
[21:28] - And so they they come to us for
[21:30] - that independence, for that
[21:32] - quality that they know that they don't have
[21:33] - to worry about what it's going to be,
[21:35] - and we're gonna give them all of that
[21:37] - data to review so they can have the
[21:39] - utmost level of confidence in their systems
[21:42] - while they're working these incredibly long hours.
[21:46] - Okay. And and so you've mentioned that there's
[21:48] - sort of a shortage of on-site medical physicists
[21:52] - in some areas. Is this a trend that
[21:54] - you're seeing within medical physics?
[21:58] - Absolutely.
[21:59] - So there's
[22:01] - there's been a shortage kind of I I
[22:03] - used to say there's a shortage on the
[22:04] - horizon,
[22:06] - ever since the residency requirement got put into
[22:08] - place to get boarded in medical physics, which
[22:11] - was very necessary.
[22:22] - Support and expertise that they were getting.
[22:27] - But that
[22:29] - that requirement
[22:30] - created a bottleneck,
[22:32] - and the amount of physicists that can that
[22:35] - can enter residencies and complete them each year
[22:39] - is now below the threshold
[22:43] - that, really, that the industry needed to kind
[22:46] - of maintain full physics staffing throughout the entire
[22:49] - country.
[22:51] - And so now we're starting to see,
[22:53] - as physicists have retired and the as the
[22:55] - general shift of the labor force has moved
[22:58] - in that direction,
[22:59] - there's simply not enough bodies
[23:02] - to cover all of the cancer centers throughout
[23:04] - the country that we need to take care
[23:06] - of these patients.
[23:09] - That's not
[23:11] - something that's easy to solve. There are a
[23:14] - lot of organizations
[23:15] - that are working as hard as they can
[23:17] - to try and get more quality physicists out
[23:20] - into the market so that we can fill
[23:22] - this need. But at the moment, I think
[23:24] - anyone who's been trying to hire recently will
[23:26] - note
[23:27] - it's a challenge, especially if you're in a
[23:30] - rural area to find someone
[23:32] - who
[23:33] - is even willing to talk to you to
[23:35] - come out. There's just not enough of us.
[23:38] - Gosh. And this is due to this residency
[23:40] - requirement that you mentioned?
[23:43] - I I think that was the initial driving
[23:45] - force. Again, it's
[23:47] - it's a very important requirement.
[23:50] - You know,
[23:51] - very historically
[23:52] - when we were doing cobalt teletherapy,
[23:54] - there wasn't nearly as much to medical physics.
[23:59] - But as time has gone on, as technology
[24:01] - has increased so much,
[24:04] - there really is a requirement for a
[24:07] - reinforced
[24:08] - stout education for physicists that are practicing in
[24:10] - the field.
[24:12] - The residency
[24:13] - requirement makes sense. I myself actually am a
[24:16] - residency
[24:17] - instructor
[24:18] - in a partnership with a university,
[24:21] - and
[24:23] - there are a large amount of physicists that
[24:26] - are working very hard to produce as many
[24:28] - quality residents as we can.
[24:31] - But, again, the field
[24:33] - is just so complex, and there are so
[24:36] - many places throughout the country that need physics
[24:38] - support that we're running into a shortage.
[24:41] - So, I mean,
[24:43] - final question. You know, with this increased need
[24:46] - for medical physicists,
[24:48] - what are the opportunities
[24:49] - for those interested in working in this field?
[24:52] - Does one physics
[24:54] - have any residency programs it can help with?
[24:59] - We do. We do. As I mentioned,
[25:01] - I'm an instructor in a residency program that
[25:04] - is partnered with the university specifically, so I'm,
[25:07] - you know, technically in a university
[25:10] - residency
[25:11] - system.
[25:12] - But one physics separately from that
[25:15] - has, I believe, four residencies
[25:18] - in therapy and one
[25:20] - in diagnostic physics, and they're expanding as much
[25:24] - as we can make them. There's a significant
[25:26] - push
[25:27] - from the administration of one physics recognizing this
[25:30] - need in the community
[25:33] - to increase the amount of quality physicists that
[25:35] - are being produced.
[25:38] - We've hired,
[25:39] - medical physics assistants
[25:41] - at some centers where that makes sense,
[25:43] - that are folks that are trying to get
[25:45] - into the field, and we've spent a fair
[25:48] - amount of time attempting to leverage those medical
[25:51] - physics assistants into our residencies.
[25:53] - Residency. I think that's a common
[25:56] - experience for people who graduate with their degree
[25:58] - and don't immediately match to a residency. They
[26:01] - end up being a medical physics assistant.
[26:06] - We we try and find people who are
[26:08] - qualified in this way, give them some additional
[26:11] - kind of on the job training,
[26:13] - and then
[26:14] - leverage them into residencies and try and get
[26:16] - them trained so that we can get them
[26:18] - boarded and have them actively participating in the
[26:21] - field of medical physics at the highest capacity.
[26:25] - Excellent. So the company is sort of helping
[26:27] - to train the medical physicists of the future.
[26:30] - As much as we can. Absolutely.
[26:33] - Brilliant. Right.
[26:35] - Okay. Well, that's great. Well, thanks very much
[26:37] - for talking with us today.
[26:40] - Indeed. Thank you for having me. It's been
[26:41] - a pleasure.
[26:50] - That was James Gilts of one physics
[26:53] - in conversation
[26:54] - with physics world's Tammy Freeman.
[26:57] - I'm Hamish Johnston, and our producer is Fred
[27:00] - Iles.
[27:02] - The music for this episode is called one
[27:04] - three seven,
[27:06] - and it was composed and performed
[27:08] - by the physicist
[27:10] - Philip Moriarty.
[27:13] - One Physics is The USA's
[27:15] - largest
[27:16] - outsourced medical physics provider,
[27:19] - trusted by over 4,000
[27:21] - clients.
[27:22] - We proudly deliver diagnostic and therapy physics services,
[27:27] - linear accelerator commissioning,
[27:29] - dosimetry
[27:30] - treatment planning,
[27:32] - and radiation safety officer services
[27:35] - nationwide.
[27:36] - We are experts in medical physics services
[27:40] - and radiation
[27:41] - safety and can support your organization,
[27:44] - whether you need annual physics testing to meet
[27:48] - regulatory guidelines
[27:50] - or are looking to implement a theranostics
[27:53] - program.
[27:54] - We are experts in all areas related to
[27:57] - physics and radiation safety
[28:00] - With national scale and a local relationship driven
[28:04] - approach,
[28:05] - our best in class physicists
[28:07] - bring precision and personalized care to every facility
[28:12] - we serve.
[28:13] - In the world of medical physics,
[28:15] - precision isn't optional.
[28:17] - It's everything.
[28:19] - One Physics, your trusted partner in medical physics,
[28:23] - linear
[28:24] - accelerator commissioning,
[28:26] - and radiation safety.
[28:28] - Learn more about our approach
[28:30] - to radiation safety,
[28:32] - or schedule a personalized
[28:34] - consultation
[28:36] - @1physics.com.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.