Re: Is Health Physics Really A Profession?

[Vincent.King@DOEGJPO.COM (Vincent King)]

     Good question.
     
     Unfortunately, I'm afraid the answer is "No" to many outside of 
     health physics.  That's because individuals are often designated as 
     "health physicist" or "radiation safety officer" based on 
     expediency to the employer rather than qualifications of the 
     individual.
     
     This is unfair both to those who have made the effort to learn (but 
     who miss out on the job), and to those who are placed in such 
     positions without adequate knowledge (but with the responsibility, 
     especially if things go wrong - i.e., scapegoats). 
     
     If we want health physics to be treated as a profession-
     
     (1) For hiring situations (assuming you have input to the 
     decisionmaking process), the greater the responsibilities of the 
     open position, the more insistence should be placed on formal 
     training (yes, I mean in a college or university, with teachers, 
     libraries, calculators, and everything).
     
     Practical experience is also necessary, but when we are talking 
     about professional level health physics, "swingin' a meter for a 
     long time" is not a substitute for being able to tackle the 
     mathematics, understand the theoretical bases of the science, and 
     express yourself in a literate manner.  (This is not knocking 
     technicians, most of whom are also professionals in a somewhat 
     different role; the few who don't recognize the distinction between 
     being an HP tech and being an HP will probably miss this point, 
     though.)
     
     (2) Maintaining a high standard for certification certainly can't 
     hurt in portraying health physics as a profession. (Read carefully: 
     no, I DIDN'T say only CHPs are professional HPs, before we get on 
     that thread again.)
     
     There are certifications where the bar has been lowered so far that 
     anyone paying the exam fee can obtain them: certifications that you 
     can buy are useless and certify nothing.  M.D.'s, PE's and CPA's 
     are treated as professionals partly because the certifications are 
     not easy and scare away MOST of the incompetents.
     
     (3) Allowing employers to get away with conferring the job title 
     "health physicist" on any available warm body for expediency does 
     NOT help health physics to be viewed as a profession.  I am open to 
     suggestions on how we stop that. 
     
     I also have no idea what to do about the media; to them, anyone can 
     be an expert, as long as they claim to be and as long as they're 
     "concerned" or "outraged" by whatever the hot topic is that day.  
     
     Vincent King
     vincent.king@doegjpo.com


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Is Health Physics Really A Profession?
Author:  LIPTONW@dteenergy.com at Internet
Date:    2/12/99 1:43 PM


I doubt that anyone in the medical profession asks his colleagues about an 
"idiot proof scalpel" or an "idiot proof heart-lung machine."  It's
generally 
accepted that you can't practice medicine without a physician, and I've
never 
met a physician who considers himself to be an idiot.  However, there seems
to 
be a widely held belief that, to practice health physics, you don't need a 
health physicist; just an "idiot proof survey meter."  This is not new with 
this posting.  When I worked at a DOE lab, some of the scientists kept
asking 
me to give them survey meters; and then I wouldn't have to survey their
labs.   
 
This forces me to ask the question, "Is health physics really a profession?"
 
I don't intend to be facetious.  It's just that we have to answer this among 
ourselves, before we can effectively address public perceptions.   
 
I propose that a group of people with similar knowledge and skills must meet
3 
criteria to be considered a profession: 
 
(1) To be considered a member of this profession, an individual must master
an 
established set of knowledge and skills.  We've made a start, here, but 
there's a long way to go.  ABHP has done a lot, and should be congratulated.
 
However, the CHP exam was never intended as a line between those who are 
professional health physicists and those who aren't.  As a matter of fact, 
I've seen little correlation between certification and job performance.
(BTW, 
I am a CHP.)  At the other end of the spectrum, I've seen a lot of
individuals 
who call themselves health physicists, but aren't even close - "Have survey 
meter (idiot proof, I hope), will travel." 
 
(2) The members of a profession must perform some socially useful function - 
i.e., organized crime is not a profession.  I think we're ok, here;
although, 
when we start wasting resources on protecting society from man-millirems, or 
zapping beagles to get the n-th significant digit on some uptake function, I 
have my doubts. 
 
(3) A member of a profession who expresses a professional opinion can be 
refuted only by another member of that profession; i.e. to sue a physician
for 
malpractice, you have to get another physician to testify for you.  Here's 
where we really fail!  Ask my friends at Brookhaven, where Alec Baldwin and 
Helen Caldicott seem to have more credibility on health physics issues than 
health physicists.   
 
I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. 
 
Ok, it's been a long week.  Maybe, I'll be in a better mood by Monday; but, 
regardless, this won't go away. 
 
The opinions expressed are strictly mine. 
It's not about dose it's about trust. 
 
Bill Lipton 
liptonw@dteenergy.com 

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