I have to interject here: while you absolutely do not need to be a physics maven to be a rad onc doc, you caanot learn it in a day. In fact while I am hardly a physicist, I have to take excetion with the previous post's decription of what you need to know.
The phyics is first of all not at all like undergrad. This is a specific body of knowledge that involves knowing the relevant interactions on a atomic level that make radiation have an effect (its all dependant upon energy, charge, electron density, density corefficents). i.e., how is radiation therepeutic? The second issue then is understanding that which- on a physics level- effects dose as you wish to deliver it to a patient. How do you tailor it? Give a machine output of x, what will be you dose? With a wedge? Without one. With a change in your distance the patient? With a change not in your distance to the patient but with a chage in point of pescription etc.
Its a little hard to describe to someone who's not already doing it.
Its not hard per se; they dont expect you to be a physicist, but they do expect you to be *very* well versed in what you are to learn during residency. It requires learning the first time, and reviewing each subsequent year as your exams and in-service come up. I'd say that if you had no physics training whatsoever, and wanted to know how long it would take you to learn, if you dedicated yourself each night to stuy, it would take about a month. (this of course does not include your radiobio or your oncology). And then you'd need to review it. Rarely does it "Take" the first time for good. But its much easier each time around (two weeks to review, one week to review etc).
But a day? I wish.
