Re: The Health Physics Profession

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 03:53 PM 9/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I believe you cannot consider yourself a professional in health physics
>without a college degree and several years work experience AFTER you earned
>your degree.

My guess is that there a lot of people like myself who know at least one
undegreed person who is an excellent health physicist. Certainly the lack
the formal education makes attaining that status more difficult, but
achievable neverthless.

Let me propose a small exercise by which you can evaluate your own ideas
about professionalism and credentials. Imagine you have just been notified
of some terrible event at your facility - something really serious,
completely unanticipated, and you have to take charge of dealing with it
RIGHT NOW. Think quickly of who you would contact to assist you - you can
select from all the HPs in America. I doubt you will spend much time
cross-referencing education levels with years of experience. You'll pick
someone you have personal knowledge of and who, in your mind, has
demonstrated the right combination of technical knowledge, thought
processes, judgement, helpfulness, work ethic, etc that you will find
necessary to deal with the event. Whether that person came to those
qualities by way of college or not won't be a consideration - the ability
to get the job done right is what matters.


Bob Flood
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(415) 926-3793     bflood@slac.stanford.edu
Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.