Continuing professional development systems for medical physicists: a global survey and analysis

Continuing professional development (CPD) and continuing professional education (CPE) are seen as being necessary for medical physicists to ensure that they are up-to-date with current clinical practice. CPD is more than just continuing professional education, but can include research publication, working group contribution, thesis examination and many other activities. A systematic way of assessing and recording such activities that a medical physicist undertakes is used in a number of countries. This can be used for certification and licensing renewal purposes. Such systems are used in 27 countries, but they should be implemented in all countries where clinical medical physicists are employed. A survey of the CPD systems that are currently operated around the world is presented. In general they are quite similar although there are a few countries that have CPD systems that differ significantly from the others in many respects. Generally they ensure that medical physicists are kept up-to-date, although there are some that clearly will fail to achieve that. An analysis of what is required to construct a useful medical physics CPD system is made. Finally, the need for medical physicist professional organizations to cooperate and share in the production and distribution of CPD and CPE materials is emphasized.