ESTRO 2023 - Abstract Book

S46

Saturday 13 May

ESTRO 2023

Materials and Methods With College approval, three de-identified Excel spreadsheets detailing 25 research-related sub-categories of the Faculty’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) database were interrogated for the 2019-21 triennium, accepting that research activity in 2020-21 would be COVID-19 suppressed. Denominators were defined as the numbers of ROs required to self report CPD each year, namely 482, 496 and 511, respectively. Primary endpoints were the percentages claiming at least one activity overall, and in each of the sub-categories individually, by year. Secondary endpoints were the “breadth” (number of sub-categories claimed per individual) and “depth” (percentages solely claiming one of four lower-level activities scoring only 1 point per unit eg. trial patient recruitment, session chair), by year. Results ROs claimed in 23/25 sub-categories. The percentages of individuals claiming at least one of these activities were 71%, 44%, and 62% in 2019-21, respectively, reflecting the COVID-19 effect. The median number of sub-categories claimed by these ROs was 2 (range 1-10) each year. The commonest activity each year was journal article co-author (25%, 16% and 27%, respectively). For 2019, the most representative year, there were noteworthy percentages publishing (25% co-authors, 10% first authors), actively participating in conferences (15% invited lecturers, 12% oral or poster presenters, 5% session chair/panel members, 4% keynote speakers), leading clinical trials (14% principal, 11% co-investigators), and peer reviewing manuscripts (14%). The percentages of ROs solely claiming only one lower-level activity were 5.2%, 4.4% and 5.9% in 2019 21, respectively. Conclusion Given that reporting all (or indeed any) research related CPD is not mandatory, these creditable results almost certainly underestimate the true level of engagement. Therefore, a culture of research is arguably more fact than fantasy in Australian and New Zealand RO. It is likely that Faculty curriculum requirements, research funding and other promotional initiatives have contributed substantively to this. This overview will be repeated in several years to evaluate the success of the new Research Action Plan and it is hoped that it may also stimulate comprehensive assessment of research engagement in other healthcare settings. PD-0082 Interest and commitment of medical physicists to scientific activities: a national survey R. Castriconi 1 , L. Placidi 2 , M. Avanzo 3 , R. Cirio 4,5 , P. Gallo 6 , A. Mazzilli 7 , A. Milano 8 , T. Rancati 9 , P. Russo 10,11 , C. Garibaldi 12 1 IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Medical Physics , Milano, Italy; 2 Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, UOSD Medical Physics and Radioprotection, Roma, Italy; 3 Centro di Riferimento Oncologico di Aviano (CRO) IRCCS, Medical Physics, Aviano, Italy; 4 Università degli Studi di Torino, Physics, Torino, Italy; 5 National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Physics, Torino, Italy; 6 IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital, Medical Physics Unit, Milano, Italy; 7 University Hospital of Parma AOUP, Medical Physics , Parma, Italy; 8 Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore, Physics, Roma, Italy; 9 Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Prostate Cancer Program, Milano, Italy; 10 Università di Napoli Federico II, Physics “Ettore Pancini”, Napoli, Italy; 11 National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Physics, Napoli, Italy; 12 IEO European Institute of Oncology, IRCCS, Unit of Radiation Research, Milano, Italy Purpose or Objective The “FutuRuS” working group of the Italian Association of Medical Physics and Health Physics (AIFM) designed a survey on the interest and commitment of AIFM members to scientific activities (SicAS). The aim was to 'catch' the experience of the members regarding their own scientific interests, participation in scientific activities and related possible difficulties, considering their working scenario, in order to focus future efforts of the Association for increasing the scientific activities of the medical physics expert (MPE). Materials and Methods SicAS was sent out in March 2022 to all AIFM members through a newsletter and official communication of the Association. SicAS was structured in three main sections: personal and institute information, involvement in scientific activities, interest and commitment to scientific activities. A definition of ‘scientific activity' has been shared as the introduction of the survey questionnaire. We collected the results of the questionnaire in fully anonymized mode between March and April 2022. Answers were picked up through the Google Forms platform and analyzed with descriptive statistics. Results Out of 1289 AIFM members (active at the end of 2021), 467 responded to the survey leading to a response rate of 36%. When asking about continuing professional development, 97% of respondents declared that they used to attend at least one refresher course per year, with 27% attending more than five courses per year. During the last 5 years, over 73% of respondents have presented a poster or oral communication at national/international conferences and in 16.9% of cases as an invited talk. Moreover, a remarkable percentage of them (85% of respondents) joined international/national congresses at least once a year. AIFM members ranked as very highly relevant to the involvement of the MPE in scientific activities. However, 34.7% indicated devoting less than 10% of their working time to scientific activities, and only 9% dedicated more than 60%. 67.5% of the respondents were unsatisfied with the amount of time spent on scientific activities. Figure 1 shows the percentage of time dedicated to research activities during working hours grouped by role. The primary barrier (figure 2) indicated in scientific activities was lack of time (77%), followed by lack of mentoring (32%).