Professional and academic follow up of 100+ graduates of the UAEMex-ININ masters and doctorate program in medical physics in Mexico

Introduction: At the beginning of the 90´s the low number of medical physicists in Mexico was a concern. In 1994, the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ), sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), promoted the creation of a teaching and training program in Medical Physics. In 1996, the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (UAEMex) and the ININ started the first formal Graduate Program in Science (Master's and Doctorate degree) specialized in Medical Physics in Mexico. Since 2009 the academic coordination of the program is under UAEMex supervision, but still ININ is its principal collaborator. The objective of this work is to present the professional and academic follow up of 100+ graduates of the UAEMex-ININ program after 24 years of experience. Methods: From the current student files, alumni records and the alumni tracking program, a retrospective analysis was carried out based on: a. Professional and social matters (geographical origin of the students, academic background, ratio of graduated students currently working as medical physicists and related areas, etc.); b. Academic impact (scientific publications and citations produced by the M.Sc. and D.Sc. programs, number of thesis by the study areas of the Medical Physics field, etc.). Results and discussion: The overall terminal efficiency of the program is 69.2%. Although the largest number of students comes from the State of Mexico and Mexico City, students have also been received from 12 other states of Mexico. The incoming students mostly have a Bachelor or Engineering degree majoring in physics. About 81.4% of the graduated work in areas related to medical physics, where 50% of that proportion are clinical medical physicists who are in 17 different states of the country. The areas of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Therapy are the preferred ones for thesis, and the publications indicate the scientific impact of the program. Conclusions: The indicators presented in this work demonstrate that, in the last 24 years, the UAEMex-ININ M.Sc. and D.Sc. Medical Physics Graduate Program has achieved its goals, in forming clinical medical physicists and researchers. We are currently working to strengthen collaboration with the clinical sector, to impact in the national normativity, to support the establishment of clinical residency, to promote international collaboration and to lead our graduated to obtain recognized certifications in the medical physics areas.