Medical Physics Practice Guidelines
Scope
MPPGs are intended to provide the medical community with a clear description of the minimum level of medical physics support that AAPM would consider to be prudent in all clinical practice settings. Support includes but is not limited to staffing, equipment, machine access, and training. These MPPGs are not designed to replace extensive Task Group reports or review articles, but rather to describe the recommended minimum level of medical physics support for specific clinical services.
To help identify gaps in guidance on various clinical topics, the Subcommittee on Practice Guidelines invites AAPM members to propose Medical Physics Practice Guideline (MPPG) topic ideas and to comment on proposed topics. You can do so in the MPPG Ideas forum on the BBS. Please read the stickied post there for more information on the MPPG initiative and the topic proposal process.
Here is a Newsletter article about what MPPGs are and how they should be used. It includes a table comparing them to Science Council TG reports in several respects.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Nicholai Wingreen who will coordinate all questions and suggestions for consideration to the leaders of the Council and committee.
This page only lists active reports. If you need to see retired reports, go herePublished Guidelines
All MPPGs are published in the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics (JACMP).
| MPPG Report 8.b TG364 |
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2023 AAPM Medical Physics Practice Guideline 8.b: Linear accelerator performance tests 'linac' found in Summary, Keywords |
| MPPG Report 9.a SPG |
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2017 AAPM-RSS Medical Physics Practice Guideline 9.a. for SRS-SBRT 'linac' found in Summary |
Background
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has long advocated a consistent level of medical physics practice, and has published many guidelines and position statements toward that goal, such as Science Council Task Group reports related to calibration and quality assurance, Education Council and Professional Council Task Group reports related to education, training and peer review, and Board-approved Position Statements related to the Scope of Practice, physicist qualifications, and other aspects of medical physics practice.
Despite these concerted and enduring efforts, the profession does not have a clear and concise statement of the acceptable practice guidelines for routine clinical medical physics. As accreditation of clinical practices becomes more common, Medical Physics Practice Guidelines (MPPGs) will be crucial to ensuring a consistent benchmark for accreditation programs.
At the 2011 AAPM Annual Meeting, the AAPM Board of Directors granted approval to develop MPPGs. The Professional Council is charged with executing the development and publication of the MPPGs. In creating MPPGs, a formal framework for developing Practice Guidelines was defined which can be referenced by clinical physicists, accreditation bodies, regulators, and hospital administrators when determining the minimum acceptable level of medical physics practice to support a clinical service.
Vision
AAPM will lead the development of MPPGs in collaboration with other professional societies. The MPPGs will be freely available to the general public. Accrediting organizations, regulatory agencies and legislators will be encouraged to reference these MPPGs when defining their respective requirements.
Medical Physics Practice Guidelines ("MPPGs") were developed by an American Association of Physicists in Medicine ("AAPM") medical physics volunteer-based Task Group based on the Task Group’s systematic review of current scientific and clinical information and broadly accepted approaches to medical physics support for treatment and/or diagnosis. MPPGs are not intended to be a fixed protocol for treatment or diagnosis of any individual patient, as some patients may require different medical physics support. A patient’s medical physics care should always be based on his or her clinician’s independent medical judgment, given the individual patient’s specific clinical circumstances. AAPM, its members and the MPPG editors disclaim any warranty or liability based on or relating to the contents of MPPGs. AAPM does not endorse any specific products, manufacturers, or suppliers and nothing in this MPPG should be interpreted as implying such endorsement.
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