Education and Training during COVID-19 Pandemic

Education and training of medical physics require close integration of academic and clinically based training. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries experienced nationwide lockdown. Universities were compelled to move teaching and learning activities online. This chapter reviews various medical physics approaches to education that were implemented during the pandemic. It describes the experience of selected postgraduate medical physics programmes in Australia, Brazil, Europe, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. While hospitals, being essential services, continued to run, albeit with much tighter control and safety measures, clinical training and hospital-based activities were discouraged, discontinued, or postponed. Virtual labs were organised as a temporary measure due to the COVID-19 restrictions. Although they were useful in enabling at least a minimum clinical exposure for students, they did not replace the hospital-based experience that is necessary for medical physics training.