A snapshot of medical physics practice patterns.
J Appl Clin Med Phys
; 19(6): 306-315, 2018 Nov.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30272385
ABSTRACT
A large number of surveys have been sent to the medical physics community addressing many clinical topics for which the medical physicist is, or may be, responsible. Each survey provides an insight into clinical practice relevant to the medical physics community. The goal of this study was to create a summary of these surveys giving a snapshot of clinical practice patterns. Surveys used in this study were created using SurveyMonkey and distributed between February 6, 2013 and January 2, 2018 via the MEDPHYS and MEDDOS listserv groups. The format of the surveys included questions that were multiple choice and free response. Surveys were included in this analysis if they met the following criteria more than 20 responses, relevant to radiation therapy physics practice, not single-vendor specific, and formatted as multiple-choice questions (i.e., not exclusively free-text responses). Although the results of free response questions were not explicitly reported, they were carefully reviewed, and the responses were considered in the discussion of each topic. Two-hundred and fifty-two surveys were available, of which 139 passed the inclusion criteria. The mean number of questions per survey was 4. The mean number of respondents per survey was 63. Summaries were made for the following topics simulation, treatment planning, electron treatments, linac commissioning and quality assurance, setup and treatment verification, IMRT and VMAT treatments, SRS/SBRT, breast treatments, prostate treatments, brachytherapy, TBI, facial lesion treatments, clinical workflow, and after-hours/emergent treatments. We have provided a coherent overview of medical physics practice according to surveys conducted over the last 5 yr, which will be instructive for medical physicists.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Practice Patterns, Physicians'
/
Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted
/
Brachytherapy
/
Workflow
/
Health Physics
/
Neoplasms
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Appl Clin Med Phys
Journal subject:
BIOFISICA
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: