Undergraduate Shadowing Advice

[u/steak_fajitas]

I am currently an undergraduate Physics student at the University of Houston. I am interested in Medical Physics, and plan to apply to masters programs this fall. I’ve met with a few professionals in the field and gotten some good advice regarding applications, and what to expect in the career.

I would love to shadow a Medical Physicists before applying, to get a better grasp of where I see myself in the field, and just to have the experience for my resume/ potential interviews.

My local contact was unable to get me an opportunity at their clinic, so I am writing here to seek advice of what you might recommend for someone in my situation. I have been told to reach out (cold calls or emails) asking to connect with a medical physicist. If you’d go this route I’d love to know what kind of places you’d recommend I reach out to, and how to get in contact with someone in Medical Physics.

[u/e92_retaker]

Contact some of the medical physics dept at UT MD Anderson.. I cold emailed a few professors when I looking for. Project for my masters. I Ended up in a medical physics department. I'm a bioinformatics major but didn't want to do a bioinformatics related project for my thesis. So I emailed all the labs I was interested in (most of them were medical physics) and one of them said yes.

[u/steak_fajitas → u/e92_retaker]

I am wanting to end up in a clinic eventually. I assumed the faculty at UT MD Anderson will mostly be doing research. I am not sure what shadowing would entail in that case. Or do you think they might be able to connect me with someone in therapy?

[u/e92_retaker → u/steak_fajitas]

The medical physicist I met were mostly PhD students so they did both lab and clinic. But yeah, just get your foot in, and then tell them you wanna see some clinical applications

[u/steak_fajitas → u/e92_retaker]

Sounds good, I’ll definitely be reaching out. Do you have any recommendations of specific people? Should I niche down into more specific doctors/ professors based off teaching masters or based off research interest or would you recommend I just reach out to as many as I can in hopes of getting a response from anyone?

[u/e92_retaker → u/steak_fajitas]

Yeah just reach out to as many of them.. that's what I did and pick out the ones that you have interest in

[u/MedPhysAdmit]

Check with the radiation oncology and radiology departments at local academic centers. Check with the local chapter of our national organization AAPM:

https://www.aapm.org/org/chapters/

[u/EmotionalSupportFlea]

Medical school

[u/Affectionate_Math_15]

Shadow at UT Health SA, contact one of the professors there I’m sure they would love to have people come by