(Sunday, 7/14/2019)
Room: ePoster Forums
Purpose: To identify the current state of residency training in physics plan reviews.
Methods: A voluntary, anonymous survey was sent to all program directors of accredited therapeutic medical physics residency programs in North America. Survey questions were developed to determine whether and how residents are trained in physics plan reviews. Survey questions were developed using expert validation and cognitive pre-testing.
Results: Using a prospectively-approved study (COMIRB18-1073), responses were collected from 70 program directors, resulting in a 70% response rate. All respondents (100%) emphasized patient safety to be the purpose of physics plan reviews. Of the respondents, 94% indicated that physicists should first receive training in physics plan reviews while in a residency program. The vast majority of respondents (99%) provide training to their residents in physics plan reviews. While 57 programs (81% of respondents) have residents perform physics plan reviews on actual patients as part of clinical practice (to varying levels of independence), 13 programs (19% of respondents) do not. More than half of programs use the following training
methods: observe staff physicists (97%), perform supervised reviews on actual patients for training or clinical practice (94%), use a checklist (79%), and read reference materials (63%). While only 19% of respondents currently use simulation plans with embedded errors to train residents, 72% of respondents indicated that they would use such plans.
Conclusion: The presented study is the first to characterize chart-check teaching practices in Medical Physics residencies. The vast majority of programs are currently training residents. The most common teaching methods in use are observing and performing physics plan reviews, but there is variability between the level of resident involvement in clinical practice for physics plan reviews. There is room for the field to consider advancing our training methods, which is especially important in an era of patient safety.
Keywords
Not Applicable / None Entered.
Taxonomy
Not Applicable / None Entered.
Contact Email
