The European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics Policy Statement No. 6.1: Recommended Guidelines on National Registration Schemes for Medical Physicists

This EFOMP Policy Statement is an update of Policy Statement No. 6 first published in 1994. The present version takes into account the European Union Parliament and Council Directive 2013/55/EU that amends Directive 2005/36/EU on the recognition of professional qualifications and the European Union Council Directive 2013/59/EURATOM laying down the basic safety standards for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionising radiation. The European Commission Radiation Protection Report No. 174, Guidelines on Medical Physics Expert and the EFOMP Policy Statement No. 12.1, Recommendations on Medical Physics Education and Training in Europe 2014, are also taken into consideration. The EFOMP National Member Organisations are encouraged to update their Medical Physics registration schemes where these exist or to develop registration schemes taking into account the present version of this EFOMP Policy Statement (Policy Statement No. 6.1"Recommended Guidelines on National Registration Schemes for Medical Physicists")

The European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics Policy Statement No. 10.1: Recommended Guidelines on National Schemes for Continuing Professional Development of Medical Physicists

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is vital to the medical physics profession if it is to embrace the pace of change occurring in medical practice. As CPD is the planned acquisition of knowledge, experience and skills required for professional practice throughout one's working life it promotes excellence and protects the profession and public against incompetence. Furthermore, CPD is a recommended prerequisite of registration schemes (Caruana et al. 2014 [1]; [2]) and is implied in the Council Directive 2013/59/EURATOM (EU BSS) [3] and the International Basic Safety Standards (BSS) [4]. It is to be noted that currently not all national registration schemes require CPD to maintain the registration status necessary to practise medical physics. Such schemes should consider adopting CPD as a prerequisite for renewing registration after a set period of time. This EFOMP Policy Statement, which is an amalgamation and an update of the EFOMP Policy Statements No. 8 and No. 10, presents guidelines for the establishment of national schemes for CPD and activities that should be considered for CPD

Influence of sample preparation optimization on the accuracy of dose assessment of an automatic non-fluorescent MN scoring system

Purpose: Automatizing the scoring of the cytokinesis-blocked micronucleus assay spares a lot of valuable time. The dose-effect relationship can be applied reliably for dose estimation if the quality of the slides is the same from the perspective of the used image processing algorithm. This aspect brings in additional requirements against the quality of the slides compared to the conventional visual scoring. Materials and methods: An add-in software was created to the non-fluorescent RS-MN automatic MN scoring system which is capable of measuring quantitatively the degree of typical anomalies. The image processing is less reliable when the presence of these anomalies is more frequent. The behavior of the designed sample quality parameters (SQPs) was tested on in vitro irradiated peripheral blood samples (0, 1, and 2 Gy) obtained from a healthy donor and also on samples from patients undergoing low dose-rate brachytherapy. Results: We examined 20 different SQPs and identified two that are independent and correlate significantly with the error of the fully automatic MN frequency. One is related to the size of the cells and the other reflects the homogeneity of the environment. An equation was established which presents a connection between the error of the auto MN frequency and the SQPs. By adding a fourth cleaning step to the conventional sample preparation and changing the pre-dripping temperature of the slide, the SQP can be modified, and consequently, the sample quality can be improved. The gain in accuracy is 54 ± 10 MN per 1000 binucleated cells, which corresponds to the effects of 0.5 Gy. Around the lowest limit of detection (<0.5 Gy), it means a 50–100% drop in the error of dose, which is significant. With sample quality harmonization, the positive predictive value was raised to 80–93% depending on the dose. Conclusions: With the technique described in this paper, the suitability for automated scoring of a micronucleus slide can be tested quantitatively and objectively. A method is presented with which in some cases the uncertainty of the assessed doses due to variance in sample quality can be decreased or if it is not possible its bias can be predicted. The proposed protocol leads to more reliable estimation of dose. The SQPs are designed in a way that they have the potential to be adapted to similar systems

A generic curriculum development model for the biomedical physics component of the educational and training programmes of the non-physics healthcare professions

The objective of the study was the construction of a generic curriculum development model for the use of biomedical physics (BMP) educators teaching the non-physics healthcare professions (HCP) in Europe. A comprehensive, qualitative cross-sectional Europe-wide survey of the curricula delivered by BMP in Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) was carried out. Curricular content was collected from faculty web-sites, curricular documents and textbooks. The survey data was supplemented with semi-structured interviews and direct observation during onsite visits. The number of faculties studied was 118 from 67 universities spread all over Europe, whilst the number of onsite visits/interviews was 15 (geographically distributed as follows: Eastern Europe 6, North Western Europe 5, and South Western Europe 4). EU legislation, recommendations by European national medical councils, educational benchmark statements by higher education quality assurance agencies, research journals concerning HCP education and other documents relevant to standards in clinical practice and undergraduate education were also analyzed. Best practices and BMP learning outcomes were elicited from the curricular materials, interviews and documentation and these were subsequently used to construct the curriculum development model. A structured, comprehensive BMP learning outcomes inventory was designed in the format required by the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). The structures of the inventory and curriculum development model make them ideally suited for use by BMP involved in European curriculum development initiatives for the HCP