The Professional Retraining Program in Radiotherapy for Medical Physicists

Abstract

The article assesses the personnel situation in the field of domestic radiation therapy and nuclear medicine. Despite the fact that in recent years there has been a significant re-equipping of Russian medical centers with the latest devices, the quantitative indicators of medical equipment normalized for the number of residents of the country are still significantly inferior to the indexes other countries. And this problem is greatly aggravated by the insufficient number of specialists who can work on the equipment supplied. First and foremost, this refer to medical physicists who are responsible not only for ensuring the required accuracy when applying a dose of ionizing radiation to the tumor, but also for ensuring radiation safety when working with sources of ionizing radiation. A continuing vocational educational retraining program covering development, operation and application of high-tech systems for radiotherapy is being proposed. This program was developed and tested at the Department of Physics of Accelerators and Radiation Medicine of the Physical Faculty of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University with the support of the Rusnano Foundation for Educational Programs. The co-executors in the development and approbation of the Program were the National Medical Research Center of Radiology, A.I. Burnasyan Federal Medical Biophysical Center of the FMBA of Russia. Invited experts in the process of developing the Program were scientists and specialists of the Bauman MSTU, Tomsk Polytechnic University, NRNU MEPhI, N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology. As a result of a professional educational program, the necessary professional skills for working as specialists in radiotherapy units and nuclear medicine centers are formed, which will successfully solve the problem of professional human resources for the clinical centers of Russia. The program was developed and successfully implemented at the Department of Physics of Accelerators and Radiation Medicine of the Physics Department of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. The need to develop a program of assessment of medical physicists, which are working at the moment, is being considered. This will guarantee a high level of knowledge necessary for full participation in the medical process and making responsible decisions on the therapeutic use of radiation devices and ensuring radiation safety of patients and personnel.