The inaugural Patient Communication for Medical Physicists Workshop was held on February 8-9 and included 16 attendees from 10 different institutions. Todd Atwood PhD and Derek Brown PhD designed the content and taught all of the didactics and exercises, while Titania Juang PhD and the first year physics residents helped run the workshop. The agenda included lectures on “Experiences in Communicating with Patients” and “Effective Communication Strategies for Physicist-Patient Interactions”, and exercises involving designing ideal physicist-patient interactions, answering questions from patient consults, analyzing physicist-patient consult videos, role-playing, and simulated patient interactions.

Todd Atwood PhD and Derek Brown PhD participated in the inaugural Varian Advanced Radiotherapy Clinical School held in Jundiaí, Brazil (December 5-8th). This course included case-based learning with expert clinicians from some of the leading cancer centers in the country. The multi-day course provides individuals and teams with the clinical knowledge needed to implement advanced treatment techniques.

Physics Direct Patient Care Randomized Trial Launched Under the direction of Todd Atwood PhD and Derek Brown PhD, RMAS has launched a phase III trial focused on evaluating the utility of direct patient care by the medical physicist. This trial is the culmination of several years of work and truly epitomizes the mission of the UC San Diego RMAS Medical Physics Division, namely “ReThinking Medical Physics”. Based on the promising results of a recently published Phase II study, this prospective trial will enroll a total of 250 patients randomizing them to either two education sessions by a medical physicist versus no additional education. The primary endpoints are patient anxiety and satisfaction. To learn more about the Physics Direct Patient Care Initiative, check out a recent video highlighting the program.