Buckey, Courtney

Abstract Clinical medical physics is a profession that intersects with various groups as part of a broader healthcare team, including dosimetrists, radiation therapists, radiologic and MRI technologists, IT specialists, and physicians. Success in this field requires academic and technical excellence as well as comprehensive skills for working effectively within an interdisciplinary healthcare team. When hiring medical physics residents, the selection of well‐rounded and highly qualified candidates can be facilitated through a holistic review process that ensures consideration of traditional metrics such as academic performance while also accounting for the importance of various experiences, personal attributes, and intrinsic motivations that impact clinical performance and patient care. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) emphasizes an overall consideration of Experiences, Attributes, Competencies, and Metrics (EACM) as important for the search process. As part of the healthcare community, medical physics shares the same commitment to high‐quality patient care. By adopting the AAMC's EACM framework, medical physics residency programs can strengthen the fairness, rigor, and overall effectiveness of their application review processes—ultimately benefiting applicants, the medical physics community, and the patients we serve. This Society of Directors of Academic Medical Physics Programs (SDAMPP) task report aims to provide information and resources for applying holistic review to the applicant selection process for medical physics residency programs. Our objective is to enable program directors to reevaluate their selection methods in the context of institutional and program missions and goals and to improve the quality and specificity of recruitment by integrating holistic review concepts into their residency recruitment processes. This initiative can inspire change in recruitment practices, aid programs in hiring well‐rounded and well‐qualified residents, and support the professional growth of our trainees in healthcare. This report provides an overview of holistic reviews and its core principles. We review the current literature and provide evidence from successful implementations of holistic review in other medical fields to illustrate how it can benefit our field. Furthermore, we outline actionable recommendations to facilitate transitioning to a holistic review framework and address potential barriers with practical solutions. A supplemental workbook is provided to guide residency programs in developing their own holistic application review and interview processes. With this report, we aim to provide practical implementation guidelines that will allow residency program directors to implement a selection methodology that comprehensively assesses the full qualifications of individual candidates and ultimately fosters the development of versatile and competent clinical medical physicists who are best equipped to advance the field, meet patient needs, and improve patient care.

Abstract Purpose To develop and implement an in‑house treatment‑management platform to improve communication, data accessibility, and task tracking across a radiation oncology department. Methods We developed Capsule, a custom software platform that centralizes patient data from the ARIA oncology information system (Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, United States), and integrates it with data from Outlook (Microsoft, Redmond, United States), spreadsheets, and manual inputs. Built using C#, SQL, and the .NET framework, it features a graphical interface in XAML with twelve modular tools to support workflows across a large multi‐modality department. A formal validation, feedback, and maintenance cycle was established. Its impact on workflow efficiency was evaluated using average CarePath task duration before and after implementation, supplemented by user interviews and surveys. Results The Department Schedule, Treatment Planning and On‐Treatment Whiteboard, Spreadsheet, and various workload tracking modules emerged as the most frequently used among dosimetrists surveyed.The Whiteboard module consolidates planning metadata for streamlined workflows. Workload and scheduling modules help distribute tasks fairly. The Department Schedule module centralizes daily role and contact information. The Spreadsheet module allows dosimetrists to identify a reference for unique plans and provides secure access to large exportable tabulated patient data and clinical trends. Other modules support proton down‐time replanning and special procedure physics assignment. One year after Capsule's implementation, most tasks in the external beam radiation therapy workflow experienced a reduction in average duration. Discussion Capsule streamlines workflows by integrating multiple tools into a single platform, supporting urgent scenarios, and improving task hand‐off. Its modular design allows customization to local workflows, but implementation must be guided by institutional oversight and formal quality management to ensure data security and compliance. Conclusion Capsule can provide a solution for improved workflow efficiency, communication, and interdisciplinary coordination. By democratizing access to routine and retrospective data, it supports treatment planning, scheduling, and quality improvement. Ongoing updates are essential as clinical practices evolve.