Dr. Ray Els, Clinical Medical Physicist
We are happy to have Dr. Els as our Radiation Oncology Physicist. Clinical medical physicists are a very important part of the radiation oncology team. Their primary role is to assure that the highest level of quality care is maintained. Once the radiation equipment is installed, the physicist is also responsible for commissioning the equipment, which involves taking enough measurements so that the equipment can be used clinically. The medical physicist is frequently consulted by the radiation oncologist to help design a treatment that is difficult or unusual. Dr. Els was born and raised in Houston, Texas. After spending 22 years in schools of various kinds, he emerged with a BA, MS, and Ph.D. Following this he accepted his countryÕs call and was commissioned to become an officer in the US Public Health Service. He served in the Bureau of Radiological Health in Washington, D.C. and attained the rank of Lt. Commander. He then accepted a job at the Cancer Institute of Victoria, Australia, a rather large cancer center in Melbourne, but he spent most of his time in the state of Tasmania.

Dr. Els and his family then returned to the US and he worked at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas and then the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio. He spent the next 20 years in Atlanta and New Orleans as the head of a consulting firm supplying Physics, Dosimetry, and Linear Accelerator service. He passed the ABR exams in Radiological Physics in 1977. After living for a brief period in Alabama, he resigned from his job and started doing Locums Tenants. His first Locum was in Charleston, SC and after 9 months there, he became part of the CKCI family.