Understanding matters more than one badge
How can you get useful medical physics work experience?
Hospital shadowing can help you understand the work, but it is not essential for England STP eligibility. Projects, employment, research, volunteering, coding, teaching and public engagement can all provide relevant evidence.
Does it have to be in a hospital?
No. A clinical setting adds context, but selectors can assess skills and potential developed elsewhere. The important step is to explain honestly what an experience shows and what it does not show.
- A dissertation or research placement
- Laboratory or quality-control work
- Data analysis, coding or modelling
- Teaching, tutoring or science communication
- Customer, care or public-facing work
- Volunteering with responsibility
- Team projects with real constraints
How can you approach a department?
- Check whether it advertises an open day, careers event or placement route
- Read its website before sending a concise enquiry
- Say who you are, what you hope to understand and your availability
- Accept that departments may be unable to host observers
- Do not request patient access or confidential material
- Avoid mass-emailing the same generic message
What could a respectful enquiry say?
Hello, I'm a [course/year/current role] exploring a career in medical physics. I have read about your department's work in [area] and would like to understand the day-to-day role more clearly. Do you offer any open days, short observation opportunities or public resources for prospective applicants? I understand that patient access or shadowing may not be possible. Thank you for any guidance you can share.
Adapt the message so it explains briefly why that department is relevant to you. A short, specific enquiry is easier for a busy team to understand and answer than a generic request.
What should you learn from an opportunity?
- How scientific decisions affect patients and services
- How quality, risk and escalation work
- Which professions collaborate and where responsibilities differ
- What the specialty does beyond its headline equipment
- Which parts of the work fit or challenge your assumptions
How do you record useful evidence?
After the experience, capture the situation, your action, the result and the learning in private preparation material. Protect confidential information and never include identifiable patient or commercially sensitive detail.
What can you do if shadowing is not available?
You can still learn about the work and build useful evidence. Look for department open days, careers webinars, trainee profiles, public talks and reliable descriptions of local services. In study, work or volunteering, pay attention to experiences that involve measurement, data, safety, quality, teamwork or explaining technical ideas. Keep a brief note of what you learned and how it changed your understanding of the role. Shadowing can help, but a thoughtful application does not depend on having hospital access.
Make the experience useful
What did the experience actually demonstrate?
Translate the strongest examples into clear evidence without overstating your role.
Sources and review date
Last reviewed: 18 August 2026