Editorial: Medical Physicists as Educators

Just over a year ago I was fortunate to have attended a workshop entitled “Becoming a better teacher of medical physics.” The workshop was sponsored by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and was targeted at medical physicists who are involved in teaching, whether it be to medical physics students, medical residents, technologists, or any other population group. Presenters included medical physicists, physicians, and physics educators, and much of the workshop involved active participation by the physicists in attendance. As a medical physicist who is heavily involved in the teaching of medical physics to medical residents, as well as to medical physics graduate students, I learned several lessons from the workshop. In particular, I became aware of what I believe to be a problem facing medical physicists as educators, and an explanation of why medical physicists are perhaps not as effective as educators as we could be. To understand the issue of medical physicists as educators, let us review the differences in the education and skills of medical physicists as researchers or clinicians as compared to the education and skills of medical physicists as educators. Once we can recognize these differences, we can then address how to respond to the existence of these differences. The education that prepares a medical physicist for research or clinical work includes acquisition of core knowledge and skills in advanced physics and mathematics, typically learned during the physicist’s undergraduate education, followed by instruction in medical physics principles and medical physics problem solving (thesis), which is typically part of graduate education. Finally, specific clinical skills are learned through either a residency program or on-the-job training. The cognitive skills acquired by medical physicists and applied in their practice include analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These cognitive skills have specific definitions(1). Analysis, for example, is the ability to examine and break information into parts by identifying motives or causes and to make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations. Verbs used to describe analysis include “compare,” “analyze,” “classify,” “distinguish,” “categorize,” “select,” and “prioritize”. Synthesis is the ability to compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions. Verbs used to describe synthesis include “compose,” “develop,” “design,” “combine,” “construct,” “produce,” “plan,” and “organize”. Finally, evaluation is the ability to present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria. Verbs used to describe analysis include “judge,” “relate,” “criticize,” “evaluate,” “critique,” “recommend,” “appraise,” and “compare”. Analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are all identified as higher-order cognitive skills, and these activities are what medical physicists are good at, and what differentiates medical physicists from dosimetrists, physics assistants, technologists, etc. Medical physicists achieve these skills through their educational program. When we look at a medical physicist’s educational responsibilities, we find that typically, the medical physicist has had very little formal training. As a consequence, the medical physicist’s ability to apply the high-order cognitive skills of analysis, synthesis, or evaluation to the educational process is limited. Very likely, our teaching skills were obtained by modeling the behavior of our own teachers. Moreover, because we lack understanding of the educational process, we imitate behavior without understanding the rationale for that behavior. That makes us technicians, not scientists. As a consequence we may be reluctant to incorporate new teaching behaviors and our teaching methodologies tend to be conservative. I would challenge any medical physicist currently involved in education with answering the following two questions: