New medical physicists in the US: Crunching the numbers

If you are entering the field of medical physics or have been around for a while, you might be wondering "how many new medical physicists are joining the ranks each year?" In the US this is an especially important question in light of the 2014 ABR residency mandate and possible effects of an aging population on cancer incidence.

As a recent graduate, one of the topics fresh on my mind is the number of jobs available to graduating students. This is of course a supply and demand game (or possibly a supply and supply game when you consider number of residency spots). Since potential medical physicists in the US can come from many different "sources" (i.e. accredited medical physics grad programs, non-accredited medical physics grad programs, non-medical physics grad programs), it would be somewhat difficult to directly count the number of new grads. I think it is therefore instructive to look at the raw stats of the number of people taking the ABR medical physics board exams, which are (recently?) available on the ABR website.

What we see in the data is a marked increase in the number of people taking all three parts of the ABR certification exam over the period of 2006 - 2010, with a slight downtick in 2008. The increase in the number taking Part 3 (Oral) in all specialties is +45% (220 in 2006 to 319 in 2010). The increase in the number taking Part 1 over the same time period is approximately +35%.

This presents the obvious question of what will happen to this trend when the ABR residency requirement takes full effect in 2014.


For more info on this topic:

• Mills MD, Thornewill J, Esterhay RJ. Future trends in the supply and demand for radiation oncology physicists. J Appl Clin Med Phy. 2010 Apr;11(2) (open access!)
• Jean Moore, Medical Physics Workforce Study: Overview, AAPM presentation, 2010
• Final report - AAPM Workforce Study Report (AAPM login required)