The September 2004 issue of the Health Physics Society (HPS) newsletter, Health Physics News, contained an important article by Kevin Nelson, chair of the HPS Human Capital Crisis Task Force. Dr. Nelson addresses an aging population of health physicists and eludes to the "four Rs":
The Accelerator Section approved an annual H. Wade Patterson Award in 2002. It was first awarded in 2003, with an end to recruit health physics graduate students into the special world of accelerator health physics. Of the estimated 6,700 active radiation protection workers in the United States, very few are directly involved with the accelerator community. The largest portion of this community is located on the west coast and at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facilities across the nation. Many of the current crop of graduate students, who might have considered a career in health physics, have elected instead to concentrate on the more lucrative medical physics option. Here at Louisiana State University (LSU), we have perhaps 20 medical physics students and two master’s level health physics students. We need to challenge ourselves to improve resources to provide sufficient numbers of well-trained individuals to meet the needs of the accelerator community.
Further, medical physicists frequently take over the traditional roles of health physicists, or conversely, the health-physics-trained individual takes an extra year of internship to become a medical physicist and play in both worlds. Thus, there is clearly a problem with retention. Accelerator health physicists may be especially vulnerable to moving directly to medical physics due to the increased use of medical accelerators. From 1995 through 2002, the number of health physicists matriculated actually declined 55%. It is clear that for the aging population of trained health physicists there will be significant short-falls in replacement upon massive retirements. As we looked at our colleagues in Washington, we recognized that many are not far from retirement age, and the numbers of students attending the meeting appear fewer each year.
Specifically, for the accelerator community, the sword is actually double edged. First, if the United States is to remain competitive in accelerator physics, it must support high-energy physics. However, it appears that they have not considered the safety implications of such programs. There are few places training accelerator health physicists, certainly too few to fill the shoes of those who will retire. There is therefore a need for the DOE to bring back the old DOE fellowships of the 50s, 60s, and 70s and to dedicate a significant portion to specific training grants for accelerator health physicists.
I would be interested in knowing your thoughts and suggestions. Who should lead this effort (i.e., volunteers sought)? There is no doubt that the HPS has noted the crisis-in-the-making, having reviewed the problem for two full years before making its document public. The accelerator community needs to make sure it garners a significant number of DOE fellowships, should they become available.