The roles, responsibilities and status of the medical physicist

Medical physics is one of the important areas of physics in health practice. This area is made up of radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, and diagnostic radiology. Training, responsibility and duty of medical physicsts who work in this field described with international protocols all over the world. Especially, one of the indispensible condition of a radiotherapy center is dependence of a medical physicsts who has master degree in this field. This is an important rule of Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK) in our country for licensing. Devices which are results of high technology in the area of radiotherapy let usage of complex treatment technique by help of medical physicst who is trained in the field with determined training programs. Medical physicst has important roles and responsibilities for maintaing the function of treatment devices according to predetermined quality protocols, selecting proper treatment techniques, and providing the radiation protection for the patient and the staff. The number of medical physicist in this field is quiet insufficient in our contry. According to number of devices and the patient population it doesn't half of the neccesary number determined by the international standarts. Increasing number of devices in the pre-existing centers, and opening of new radiotherapy centers make this gap greater