Medical physics is a discipline involving the application of physics to biology and medicine. The clinical practice of medical physics, for medical diagnosis and therapy, involves the application of both ionizing and nonionizing radiation to patients.
Current U.S. standards of professional practice require medical physicists to complete structured clinical training and either have graduated from accredited graduate programs or obtain a certificate approved by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Programs (CAMPEP).
The University of Michigan offers a CAMPEP-accredited Medical Physics Certificate, administered through our Medical Physics Residency Program, as a collaboration with the Rackham Graduate School and Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences.
This course is taught by faculty from the Cancer Biology Division. Offered in the fall as a part of Medical Physics Certificate Program, this course covers three basic areas of radiation biology:
- Molecular and cellular radiation biology
- Radiation and human health
- Principles of radiation therapy
The Medical Physics Certificate Program is open to students with a PhD in physics, engineering or a science field related to medical physics. The certificate program is currently open for enrollment.
To qualify for CAMPEP certification, students must take a specific set of six courses with a total of 19 credits. Students who have completed some of these courses while undergraduates or as part of previous graduate study will be required to take any additional CAMPEP-required core courses as well as a sufficient number of approved technical elective courses, for a minimum of 12 credits being attributed solely to graduate certificate studies through Rackham.
As CAMPEP requires a doctorate (for students that do not have a CAMPEP approved medical physics MS) to enter a residency program for clinical training, official enrollment into the Medical Physics certificate will only be granted after the doctoral degree is earned.
