The Health Physics Profession

[Bill Pitchford <Bill.Pitchford@asu.edu>]

An unexpurgated quote from personal correspondence, author to remain 
anonymous:
 Lawyers who have not passed the bar are excluded from their 
profession, physicians that are not licensed are excluded from their 
profession, engineers that are not licensed are excluded from their 
profession, many states require nuclear medicine, radiologic, and 
radiation therapy technologist to pass board exams to practice their 
vocation.   Medical physicist must be certified to perform 
mammography QA.  Let's not forget licensing of  radon mitigators.  
Even your hairdresser cannot practice his/her trade without a 
license. Need I go on?  This is not a new concept.

I am not trying to be elitist.   I agree that there are good non CHP, 
non degreed HP's out there and  vice versa.  I have received bad 
advice from lawyers, driven through bad intersections designed by 
registered professional engineers, and I'll never win any fashion 
awards for my haircuts.

The point is that an individual's credentials have been examined and 
deemed to have met a minimum standard for that person to be a part of 
a profession.  It's done for all of the groups I mentioned above and 
many others.  Are you suggesting that we should allow ANYONE without 
regard to training, experience, education, or certification 
to represent themselves as a health physist?  I for one would object 
if a physician called him/herself a health physicist because they 
took and passed my radiation safety short course (designed for 
research laboratory workers) while in medical school.  

Steve McQueary stated that health physics is an "extremely large 
field and no one person can be a professional in all aspects."  But 
engineering, medicine, and law are arguably even larger fields.  
That's why there is specialization within the profession.  I 
wouldn't go to a proctologist to have my head examined (although 
there are those who may suggest that I should), or to a real estate 
attorney to handle a divorce.  That's why the CHP code of ethics 
states that one should not practice outside of one's area of 
expertise.

It seems to me that the questions are:

(1)  Should there be standards to be considered a professional HP?

(2)  What should those standards be?  

The standard should be demonstratable (is that a word?), i.e., 
"practicing health physics at a professional level" is circular so it 
cannot be a standard.

I personally believe that there should be a standard and that a 
strong case can be made for certification as the standard.  

 Next on the soap box.

Thus ends the quote...

Yes, good question, yes(demonstrable)

Bill Pitchford
HP at large
Bill.Pitchford@asu.edu