Medical Physics Training Programme At Chulalongkorn University And Evaluation Of Its Effectiveness

Recently medical practice has been experienced tremendous improvements either in diagnosis and treatment of human disease developing and introducing in the clinical practice new technologies and methods. Medical physicists (MPs) have surely played a central role in this process contributing to research activities and applying physics and advanced technical skills to the routine medical practice. The training of medical physicists is therefore one of the key point as the specialized professional knowledge that medical physicists possess assures the optimum outcome for patients in many area like for example radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and diagnostic radiology. Education often consists of postgraduate courses and on-the-job training in hospitals. Actually the largest differences between the training schemes are encountered among Countries that introduced the MP profession since many years and Countries that only recently started the process. In many Countries the availability of teaching materials (textbooks, journals, on-line tutorials, web-based instructions etc) can be different and a strong influence on the training possibilities is also related with the national specific legal requirements. Aim of the paper is to describe the MP training scheme adopted at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok (CUB) and to assess its effectiveness. The evaluation of the CUB training effectiveness is presented and an analysis of the weak and strong points of the scheme is carried on. The specific impact and contribution to the development of the student education of courses, training material and management is also evaluated.