The professional radiation workforce in the United States

Abstract

The professional radiation workforce in the United StatesA radiation workforce of sufficient size and capacity is necessary to meet our nation's current and future needs for energy production, health care, and other vital areas. Over the long term, workforce shortages have the potential to compromise our nation's capabilities in these strategic sectors and, if sustained, would result in degradation of economic competitiveness and national security. In 2015, a multidisciplinary team began reviewing a selection of professional radiation workforces in the United States with the goal of developing a resource that would contain information of relevance to employers, policy makers, educational institutions, students contemplating radiation-related careers, and the public. This approach was taken because ionizing radiation is used for a wide array of applications, and these frequently involve multidisciplinary teams. Indeed, the various radiation disciplines comprise a synergistic ecosystem, with many interdependencies, and this motivated us to review disciplines individually, as well as in the context of the larger multidisciplinary ecosystem.The team members were drawn from those professions that are chiefly responsible for the radiation protection of workers, patients, and the public: health physics, medical physics, medicine (including diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, and radiation oncology), nuclear engineering, radiation biology, and radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry. Due to practical considerations, this selection was limited; nonetheless, the authors emphasize the importance of other worker cohorts, including technologists who work in medical radiation therapy and imaging, and radiation epidemiologists and ecologists, who draw on the basic sciences of physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology and play a significant role in radiation protection. It is hoped that these and other groups will be considered in future works.The methods used to prepare this review included surveying relevant information on each workforce, using data from the literature and other resources, such as information from professional societies. All data were evaluated by teams of subject matter experts, comprised of leaders in each of the respective professions. However, it must be emphasized that some of the professions have few to no means of surveilling theirThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.