Physicist Tanya Kenny in a screening room at St James's Hospital, Dublin.
There are approximately 80 members in the Association of Physical Scientists in Medicine, which represents the medical physicists and clinical engineers working in health care and in medical applications in Ireland. Its e-mail address is www.apsm.org/bodya.html
The Institute of Physics in Ireland, represents physicists throughout the island of Ireland, both North and South. Check its website out at www.tcd.ie/iop.
There are 12 other Institute of Physics branches throughout Britain and the North. The institute presents awards to teachers of physics at second-level in recognition of outstanding service in the classroom in the teaching of physics. If you have a teacher you want to nominate, contact Tom Loughnane, principal, St Joseph's Secondary School, Rush, Co Dublin, or phone 01-843 7534.
Salaries vary considerably depending on the sector a physics graduate begins work in. However, a minimum starting off estimate is between £17,000 and £25,000
The key to Tanya Kenny, a physicist at St James's Hospital in Dublin, is her passion for maths. "I had a big love of maths originally - with how things worked," she says.
"I had a fixation with electricity. I just thought you can see electricity, I can really understand it. It's all so easy." She smiles at her innocence back then when she was going to school. She learned to appreciate the complexities and the abstract, nebulous nature of electricity later on in her studies. "It was more difficult that I imagined," she says.
At school in the all-girl Loreto Secondary School in Beaufort, south Dublin, she "naturally took the science subjects", including physics for the Leaving Cert. Her choice for third level took her to Trinity College Dublin to do a four-year degree programme in experimental physics (natural sciences). The subjects in the first two years were physics, maths and geology. The subjects were grist to her mill.
At the beginning of third year, students had to choose between geology and physics, and for Kenny it was an easy choice, just a matter of carrying on with physics. There was just a handful of women in a class of 20 or so, she recalls. Overall "third year was the hardest year of all to get by", she cautions. "I felt it was the hardest. Fourth year was tough as well, but once you'd made third year you felt you'd make it."
Her final year project was on semi-conductor devices. She measured the effective lifetime of minority carriers in a silicon sample using time-resolved microwave conductivity methods. She spent three months on this, working in a lab and gaining experience in pure research.
On graduation with a honours degree, she discovered that St James's Hospital was about to run a two-year, postgraduate diploma course in physical sciences in medicine. And she "kind of got hooked", she says. Many of those who graduated with her went into pure research or IT, but it was the range and diversity of work in the medical field that appealed to Kenny.
On completion of the diploma course her first job was as a scientific officer with the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, which is based in Clonskeagh, Dublin. This body regulates the use of ionising radiation throughout the State. Quality assurance testing, report writing and incident investigation were all "key elements of the job", she says.
Today her job at St James's Hospital is in the department of medical physics and bio-engineering. It involves working primarily in the area of radiation protection, in particular in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine. Her work "is very diverse, that's why we all like it", she says listing at least six different areas of responsibility, including an element of lecturing and teaching as well as liasing with the suppliers of X-ray equipment. The team must also test and assess levels in old and new machines in dental surgeries and hospitals around the State. The department provides a radiation protection service to four health boards.
"If someone was getting a new X-ray room, we'd have to advise on the shielding requirements," she says. Also "we go out and we do quality control tests on all those pieces of equipment that have to be visited annually, to ensure optimum performance for staff and patients". She is also involved in compiling updated protocols in accordance with international standards and guidelines to ensure the scientific and technical quality of the service.
What she loves about the job is "the happy balance" between research for reports and protocols and the hands-on testing and monitoring of equipment which involves dealing with people. "You get to go out on the road and meet people. Also we issue technical reports. And any new piece of equipment that has to come in we have to test it. And we have to liase with the suppliers." All the elements of the job make for a busy day, she says. Diagnostic radiology equipment such as those which are used to do mammography, fluoroscopy and CT scans, are all tested and checked by Kenny and her teammates at the external services group within the hospital's department of medical physics and bio-engineering.
"They wouldn't be able to diagnose properly if the image quality wasn't good," she explains. It's a sobering thought to know she is responsible, as a physicist, for making sure "that the equipment is working for everybody's safety".
