Bioethics for Medical Physicists

This course explores ethical issues that arise in the practice of medical physics in research, education, and clinical settings. Topics include misconduct (fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism) and questionable conduct in scientific research; authorship and publication practices; human subject research (informed consent and IRB review, patient/subject privacy and confidentiality, quality improvement vs research, and vulnerable subjects); the history of human radiation experiments and medical physics; research with animals; incidental findings in radiation therapy and imaging research; conflicts of interest; mentorship; professionalism and the AAPM code of ethics; ethics of innovative technologies (charged particle therapy); off label uses of radiation; radiation errors and patient safety; ethics of radiation protection, optimization and justification of medical radiation exposure in therapy and imaging. The course aims to increase students’ awareness of ethical issues they might face as medical physicists and to help them, through case discussions, better recognize, analyze and resolve ethical issues, conflicts, and dilemmas.