The cost of an understaffed physics team.
A single open physics post rarely stays a staffing issue. It becomes a throughput, quality and retention issue in that order.
Throughput moves first
Plan checks queue, special procedures get pushed to a narrower window, and SRS or SBRT slots become dependent on one person's calendar. Nothing breaks, but the schedule loses its slack, and the department starts treating slack as a luxury rather than a control.
QA drift is the quiet cost
Monthly and annual QA still gets done, but the discretionary work goes first: secondary checks, script maintenance, commissioning documentation, the small improvements that keep a programme current. Drift is not a compliance failure. It is a slow erosion of the margin that protects you from one.
Retention compounds the gap
Covering physicists absorb the shortfall for two quarters, sometimes three. Then the strongest of them, who are the most marketable, take the discreet conversation they previously ignored. One vacancy becomes two, and the second is harder to fill than the first.
- Track plan-check turnaround as an early warning indicator, not headcount alone.
- Protect discretionary QA and commissioning time explicitly during a vacancy.
- Assume a vacancy over two quarters carries a retention risk on the covering team.
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