What Does a Health Physicist Do?
Radiation work is only as safe as the plan behind it. Health physicists draw up those plans for hospitals, nuclear plants, federal labs and universities, designing shielding, checking monitoring records and keeping doses within limits for patients, workers, researchers and the public. Many stay in one kind of setting for their whole career.
Health Physicist Duties and Responsibilities
The primary responsibilities of a health physicist include:
- Design radiation monitoring programs for labs, clinics or reactor areas and set their survey schedules.
- Review shielding plans for new X-ray, CT or radiation therapy rooms before construction starts.
- Calculate worker and public doses from survey data and dosimeter readings, and investigate high results.
- Select and test detection instruments for new monitoring needs, from area monitors to portal scanners.
- Evaluate procedures against ALARA, the rule of keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable.
- Direct the response to spills, lost sources or contamination events and write the incident report.
- Teach radiation safety courses to researchers, nurses, technologists and plant staff.
- Assess internal doses from bioassay results and estimate intakes after an incident.
- Model releases to air and water for environmental reports and emergency plans.
- Survey buildings and land slated for decommissioning and document that they meet release limits.
Required Skills and Qualifications
To succeed as a health physicist, you will need the following skills and qualifications:
- Graduate training in health physics, medical physics or nuclear engineering
- Certified Health Physicist (CHP) credential, or progress toward it
- Dose calculation and shielding design
- Radiation detection instruments and gamma spectroscopy
- Working knowledge of NRC and state radiation rules
- Modeling codes such as MCNP or MicroShield
- Clear writing for procedures, reports and license applications
- Calm judgment during a contamination incident
Education and Training
BLS lists a doctoral degree as the typical entry education for physicists overall. Health physics is more open to graduates of physics, engineering, chemistry and biology programs, as hospitals, utilities and regulators are interested in candidates with a master's in health physics or a closely related science. Senior work without the Certified Health Physicist credential might be possible, but CHP holders will have a clear edge over other applicants.
Salary and Job Outlook
Typical pay: varies widely for this role, and BLS does not publish pay for it separately. In the wider BLS group it belongs to (Physicists), the middle half of earners made $111,720 to $222,760 a year, and the median was $172,250.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Physicists.
According to BLS, employment of physicists, the wider group that includes health physicists, is projected to grow about 7 percent from 2025 to 2035. BLS expects about 1,300 openings a year. Prospects in health physics often are tied to the state of nuclear power and medical imaging, but health physicists will be needed as more hospitals add imaging and radiation therapy and as older reactors are shut down and taken apart. The pay figures here also cover all physicists, and many health physicists earn nearer the lower end of that range.
Outlook source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 2025 to 2035, Physicists.