Unio Specialty Care and Affiliates Medical Physics Residency Program
San Diego State University (SDSU) has been graduating students in the area of Medical Physics since the early 1990’s. In the fall of 2007, Dr. Usha Sinha joined as the Chair of the Physics Department and the Director of the Radiological Health Physics (now Medical Physics) program and the Master’s program in Medical Physics received accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Educational Programs (CAMPEP) in Fall of 2010. Strong educational (lab courses and clinical internships) and research collaborations with local cancer centers have been established as a result of this graduate Medical Physics program
In August 2012, a Board Certified Medical Physicist (Dr. Mauro Tambasco) was hired by the Department of Physics at SDSU. Dr. Tambasco came to SDSU with ten years of clinical/academic experience in Radiation Oncology Physics. Eight of those years were at the University of Calgary/Tom Baker Cancer Centre where he participated in the CAMPEP accredited training of Medical Physics Residents.
The residency program at SDSU was launched with our first two residents in August 2014 by Dr. Mauro Tambasco (SDSU), Dr. Usha Sinha (SDSU), Dr. Richard LaFontaine (Naval Medical Center), and Dr. George Mardirossian (Unio Specialty Care). Sharp Grossmont Hospital also joined the program in January 2016.
The program received full accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Physics Education Program Inc. (CAMPEP) in Oct 2016. Click Here for the Full List of CAMPEP Accredited Residency Programs in Medical Physics.
The program follows the hub and spoke model with Unio Specialty Care serving as the hub and the affiliated sites serving as the spokes. This model seeks to diversify the resident’s exposure to newly emerging technologies available at the different partner clinics, and provide enhanced teaching and learning opportunities. This formalized clinical training program has four 6 month rotations through the partner clinics, and is designed to meet the standards of CAMPEP and the AAPM Reports No. 249 & 133. Unio Specialty Care and Affiliates obtained full accreditation in Dec 2016.
Unlike conventional residency programs in medical physics, the Radiotherapy Physics Residency at Unio Specialty Care & Affiliated Sites is a two year tuition based program (as of 3rd of July 2017 will be $15,750/year) that offers a Certificate through the SDSU Global Campus at SDSU. The tuition collected by the SDSU Global Campus at SDSU is used to support the program costs (i.e., administrative and educational costs associated with a certificate program in the SDSU Global Campus at SDSU).