Education
Background
Traditionally, medical physics is strongly related to areas concerning the use of ionizing radiation in medicine like radiation therapy, diagnostic imaging, nuclear medicine and radiation protection. A majority of medical physicists in clinics work in the area of radiation therapy, where it is regulated by law that the use of medical linear accelerators has to be supervised by medical physicists. In addition, most of the treatment plans, after prescription of the physician, are planned by medical physicists. In diagnostic imaging medical physics helps to apply, optimize and further develop modalities for the acquisition of anatomical and physiological images. In both of these areas medical physicists are also concerned with radiation protection of patients as well as the medical staff.
However, medical physics does not only consider ionizing radiation but is involved in other aspects of technical questions in almost all fields in medicine. For instance, one can think of the use of laser technology in diagnostics and therapy or the research and development of computer assisted surgery. Biomedical engineering is also related to molecular medicine and provides applications such as biocompatible materials or tissue engineering.
Since the start of the first course in 1994 the programme has evolved until it was rearranged in 2006 to the Master of Advanced Studies in Medical Physics with two specialisations: Radiation Therapy and General Medical Physics. Similar to the field of medical physics, the MAS is still evolving covering more areas of medical physics in the General Medical Physics specialisation.
The specialisation in Radiation Therapy aims to provide the theoretical knowledge required for the SSRPM certification. However, it should be highlighted that the MAS in Medical Physics is not equivalent to the SSRPM certification. The MAS is also not necessary in order to receive the SSRMP certification. In most cases the MAS will be partially accounted for the theoretical education needed for the certification. More information regarding the SSRMP certification for medical physicists can be found on the external pageSSRMP webpage and in the DownloadFachanerkennung SGSMP (PDF, 110 KB).
The interdisciplinary field of medical physics is reflected by the students typically coming from various backgrounds like physics, engineering, medicine, biology, chemistry and natural science. This environment creates the possibility for the students to meet people from different fields and to learn more about other areas of medical physics. However, the MAS networking is not restricted to the students. The concept of including several major medial physics groups within Switzerland as well as leading institutes at ETH combined with their link to industry provides an extremely valuable setting for getting to know the medical physics field of all disciplines Swiss wide.