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(Clinical Medical Physicist, Radiation Oncology Physicist, Diagnostic Imaging Physicist, Radiation Protection Adviser)
Science & Research
Salary
€52,000 - €95,000/yr
Level
Senior
Outlook
Growing
Sector
Science & Research
As a Medical Physicist you apply the principles of physics to the diagnosis and treatment of illness, working primarily within hospital settings under the HSE or voluntary hospital groups. Your daily responsibilities include calibrating and quality-assuring radiotherapy equipment, planning radiation doses for cancer patients, and ensuring imaging systems such as MRI, CT, and PET scanners operate safely and accurately. You collaborate closely with oncologists, radiographers, radiologists, and other healthcare professionals to deliver safe and effective patient care. Medical Physicists also contribute to research, introduce new clinical technologies, and ensure compliance with national and international radiation safety regulations.
Listen: a day as a Medical Physicist
You arrive at the hospital's medical physics department at 08:00, signing in and checking the overnight equipment logs on the department's quality assurance database. Before any cancer patient is treated today, you need to confirm that the linear accelerator — the machine that delivers targeted radiation beams to tumours — is performing within tolerance. You run a series of standardised morning output checks, placing small ionisation chambers and dosimetry phantoms in the beam path and comparing your readings against the machine's baseline values. If anything sits outside accepted limits, treatment is paused until the fault is resolved. By 09:30 you are at your workstation running a treatment plan for a new patient referred by the radiation oncologist. Using specialist planning software, you calculate the precise radiation dose needed to target the tumour while sparing surrounding healthy tissue as much as possible. This involves importing CT scan data, drawing contours around critical organs, and running iterative optimisation algorithms. The numbers have to be right; there is no margin for error.
A strong Leaving Certificate with Higher Level Mathematics, Physics, and ideally Chemistry or Biology provides the essential foundation. You typically complete an NFQ Level 8 Honours Bachelor degree in Physics, Applied Physics, or a related discipline at a university such as UCD, UCC, TCD, University of Galway, or UL. Entry to clinical practice in Ireland requires an NFQ Level 9 MSc in Medical Physics, offered at institutions including UCD and TCD, often incorporating a supervised clinical placement component. Following the MSc, graduates undertake a structured clinical training programme recognised by the relevant professional bodies before practising independently. Registration and competence standards for Medical Physicists in Ireland are overseen through alignment with the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP) framework, and CORU registration requirements for health and social care professionals continue to evolve in this field.
Most Medical Physicists in Ireland enter the HSE or voluntary hospital sector as a Medical Physicist Grade I following completion of their MSc and clinical training programme. With experience and demonstrated competence, progression to Grade II and Senior Medical Physicist roles brings greater clinical responsibility, team leadership, and involvement in service development. At the Principal or Chief Medical Physicist level, you may manage a hospital physics department, oversee radiation safety programmes, and lead research initiatives. Some Medical Physicists move into academic positions at universities, roles within industry such as medical device companies, or advisory positions with regulatory bodies such as the HPRA.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being integrated into radiotherapy treatment planning systems and diagnostic imaging, automating tasks such as organ contouring, image segmentation, and dose optimisation that previously required significant manual input. Medical Physicists are central to the clinical evaluation, validation, and governance of these AI tools, ensuring they meet safety and accuracy standards before use with patients. Rather than replacing Medical Physicists, AI is shifting the role towards greater oversight, quality assurance of automated systems, and higher-level clinical decision-making. Ongoing engagement with AI developments is becoming an essential professional competency in this field.
→ Medical Physicist (Current role)
4 year • Science & Mathematics
Bachelor4 year • Science & Mathematics
Bachelor4 year • Science & Mathematics
Bachelor4 year • Tech & Engineering
Postgraduate2 year • Science & Mathematics
Bachelor4 year • Science & Mathematics
Organisations in Ireland that employ people in this occupation.
Dublin 8
Radiotherapy physics, dosimetry, and radiation protection for cancer patients.
Cork
Clinical medical physics supporting radiotherapy, imaging, and nuclear medicine.
Dublin 9
MRI, CT, and radiation safety quality assurance in busy tertiary hospital.
Dublin 7
Radiation dosimetry, imaging physics, and radiotherapy treatment planning.
Galway
Medical physics services across Saolta Hospital Group western region sites.
Nationwide
Employs medical physicists across all hospital groups nationally.
Dublin 6 / Rathgar
Specialist radiotherapy physics, linear accelerator QA, and dose planning.
Dublin (Crumlin / Tallaght)
Paediatric imaging physics, radiation protection, and diagnostic QA.
Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick
Medical physics support for radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging services.
Dublin
Regulatory oversight, radiation protection policy, and compliance inspections.
Lucan, Co. Dublin
Imaging physics QA for PET-CT, MRI, and diagnostic radiology suite.
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