Physicist shortage ‘could delay cancer strategy roll-out’

THE roll-out of the national cancer strategy could be further delayed due to a shortage of medical physicists who ensure the safe use of radiotherapy, a trade union conference heard yesterday.

“If the Health Service Executive (HSE) is serious about radiotherapy services, then it has to be serious about training the staff to run it,” said Edwina Jones, a medical physicist and a delegate at yesterday’s special IMPACT conference.

Medical physicists check the dose, quantity and quality or radiation produced by diagnostic and therapy equipment and help plan radiotherapy doses.

“People like me are responsible for the accurate delivery of the dose prescribed for the patient. We do not operate the units but we ensure that they are operating correctly,” Ms Jones explained. It takes a minimum of seven years’ training for someone to be qualified to manage a treatment unit, she said.

Ms Jones said it is difficult to persuade foreign medical physicists to work here because of the high cost of living. Training for additional medical physicists would have to start now so there would be enough qualified staff to operate new units.

Ms Jones said she understood the HSE was considering how the plan could be implemented but the process was too slow.

It is understood the health authority has drafted in experts from the British Columbia Cancer Agency to formulate the National Cancer Control Programme promised last June by Health Minister Mary Harney.

A key element of the scheme is the reorganisation of cancer services into eight regional ‘centres of excellence’, each serving a population of 500,000.

However, there is still no implementation plan in place and no cost estimates have been published.

Ms Jones said that, as medical physics is a branch of applied physics, those planning a career in this area would be expected to have a post-graduate degree in physics first.

“We reckon it takes about five years to train somebody to work independently but if you want someone to operate at a level where they can manage these units you are talking about a minimum of seven years.”